[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA

[Rick Halperin]

Oct. 23



USA:

Obama says death penalty 'deeply troubling'


Amid new scrutiny of American capital punishment practices, President Barack 
Obama said in an interview released Friday he was disturbed by the practical 
effects of the death penalty.

While Obama said he wasn't opposed "in theory" to killing criminals convicted 
of heinous crimes, he said that data showing racial biases and wrongful 
convictions have prompted him to wonder whether the death penalty remains a 
legitimate tool.

Obama was speaking to former New York Times editor Bill Keller, who now runs 
The Marshall Project, a news organization focused on criminal justice issues.

"There are certain crimes that are so beyond the pale that I understand 
society's need to express its outrage," he said. "So I have not traditionally 
been opposed to the death penalty in theory. But in practice it's deeply 
troubling."

Saying he's "struggled for quite some time" over the death penalty, Obama also 
said recent botched executions have led him to wonder whether the application 
of capital punishment is still legal.

"We know that in the application of the death penalty we've had recent cases, 
by any standard, it has not been swift and painless but rather gruesome and 
clumsy," he said.

In the aftermath of one of those executions gone wrong -- an Oklahoma incident 
that left an accused murderer writhing and convulsing for several minutes -- 
Obama asked the Justice Department to conduct a review of death penalty 
practices.

Since then, several states have suspended executions, either for legal reasons 
or because drug companies have stopped supplying the drugs needed for lethal 
injections.

This week, conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said "it wouldn't 
surprise me" if the high court strikes down capital punishment in the United 
States, he told CBS News, though he's made similar predictions in the past.

But the case to abolish U.S. executions has gained greater traction in recent 
months, including an opinion from liberal Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, 
who questioned the constitutionality of capital punishment in an opinion this 
summer.

"This is not what people expected when they wrote the cases upholding the death 
penalty more than 40 years ago, and therefore I think it's time to revisit the 
issue," Breyer told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in an interview this fall.

(source: CNN)