[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.C., LA., ID., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

March 25



TEXAS:

A courageous decision



Re: "DA: Officer's killer should not be executed," Thursday Metro & Business.

I am writing to acknowledge and support Dallas County District Attorney John 
Creuzot's decision to spare the life of Juan Lizcano, an intellectually 
disabled man who murdered a Dallas police officer. Surely we can all agree that 
the crime was horrific and that those who commit such deeds need to be removed 
from free society to pay for their heinous act(s).

I hope that Creuzot in particular and Texas in general can follow the recent 
courageous decision of Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who declared a moratorium on 
executions in that state. Our DA should extend his wisdom of the Lizcano 
decision to all future and similar cases in Dallas, and realize that a death 
sentence in any circumstance, for any crime, is not an appropriate response 
from society.

We absolutely must become better than the worst acts of our worst offenders. 
Stop seeking death sentences and abolish the death penalty now.

Rick Halperin, Dallas,

Director, SMU Human Rights Program and Amnesty International

(source: Letter to the Editor, Dallas Morning News)

******************

Texas has 4 of the 5 counties with the most executions, data shows



5 counties in Texas and Oklahoma are responsible for 1 in 5 of the executions 
carried out in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstated the death 
penalty in 1976.

According to data from the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), 
Harris, Dallas, Bexar and Tarrant counties in Texas and Oklahoma County in 
Oklahoma are responsible for 315 out of the 1,493 executions that were carried 
out since the highest court ruled in favor of executing prisoners in Gregg v. 
Georgia.

Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsome recently issued a moratorium on executions after that 
state sent 13 inmates to their death over that same time period. The DPIC data 
found 11 individual counties that executed more people than California.

“It doesn’t really make sense to talk about the death penalty in the United 
States. The death penalty is exclusively a Southern phenomenon,” Evan Mandery, 
a professor at the John Jay College for Criminal Justice, told ABC News.

Texas alone has executed 560 people since 1976, accounting for 37.5% of the 
total 1,493 executions.

Mandery added there are fairly specific conditions in which a capital case 
comes together.

“No rich white murderer has ever been sentenced to die, so you need to be 
almost certainly a person of color, probably killed a white person who did it 
in a state with the death penalty, who did it in a county within that state 
where the prosecutor aggressively supports the death penalty and where that 
prosecutor isn’t replaced in office during the time you’re on death row by 
someone who either opposes the death penalty or takes seriously the appellate 
process,” Mandery said.

St. Louis county, in Missouri, had the 5th-most executions with 19.

Of the 30 states with the death penalty, 4 have suspended the practice. New 
Hampshire has not executed an inmate since 1939.

(source: New York Daily News)

**********************

Deputy Peter Herrera dies after line-of-duty shooting----The El Paso County 
Sheriff’s Office is confirming a deputy has died.



Deputy Peter Herrera died today, according to Sheriff Richard Wiles.

Herrera had been conducting a traffic stop in San Elizario early Friday 
morning.

EPCSO says Herrera was allegedly shot multiple times by 27-year-old Facundo 
Chavez.

Chavez has a long criminal history.

In 2017, he had a warrant of delivery of marijuana. In 2018, he had warrants 
for assault causing bodily injury to a family member and criminal mischief.

The EPCSO will ask the El Paso District Attorney to seek the death penalty for 
Chavez.

(source: CBS News)








NORTH CAROLINA:

The race to death row



Last Wednesday, California Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order that 
effectively halted capital punishment in the golden state. In a state with 737 
individuals in death row—more than 6 in 10 of whom are Black or Latinx—with 25 
who have exhausted their appeals, the deadline to sign off on their lethal 
injections would have been at the start of April of this year. Without Governor 
Newsoms’ moratorium on the death penalty, California would have resumed 
state-ordered executions after a 13-year hiatus.

As one of the 30 remaining states that continue to practice capital punishment, 
our state of North Carolina holds 141 prisoners in death row. More than 63 
percent of them are people of color, despite the fact that they make up less 
than 30 percent of North Carolina’s population. Moreover, nearly 20 percent of 
those on death row were sentenced to death by all-white juries. The most recent 
addition in the row occurred less than four weeks ago. The state has not 
carried out an execution, however, since 2006.

The faults that Governor Newsom’s cited in his decision against the death 
penalty emanate far beyond California’s borders. Here in North Carolina, more 
than 1,000 individuals have been sentenced to death row since 1910. In North 
Carolina, as in California, the arbitrary nature by which the death penalty is 
applied comes at the detriment of people of color. The chances of receiving the 
death penalty in this state increases 3.5 times if the defendant’s victim is 
white. Race is far from the only way to characterize capital punishment, but it 
is one for which such blatant statistics exist.

The chance of incriminating the wrong individual also remains uncomfortably 
substantiated. Earlier this year, a federal appeals court ruled that Charles 
Ray Finch, who was sentenced to death row in North Carolina 42 years ago, was 
“actually innocent” of his murder charge. With the undercurrents of racism and 
unreliability that explicitly dominate the process, capital punishment creates 
a game of racial Russian roulette out of the criminal justice system that is 
supposedly meant to protect our citizens.

Beyond North Carolina’s capital punishment policies, racial bias is the 
signature thread that winds throughout the state’s criminal justice system. In 
the state, black students are almost six times more likely to be arrested in 
school than their white peers—among the worst in the United States. This, in 
addition to the fact that half of all referrals to the criminal justice system 
come from schools, is representative of a state that falls just short of 
legally codifying the school to prison pipeline for children of color. Turning 
a blind eye to the disproportionate placement of people of color in prisons is 
unjust, yet remaining ignorant to the pathway towards execution that we push 
them towards is inhumanly cruel.

The inhumanity of state-sanctioned killing continues, however, to enjoy washed 
down portrayals in popular entertainment, such that most of us are more aware 
of who is sentenced to die in our favorite television show than in the state we 
reside in. Even worse, is the continued perpetuation of the myth that life-long 
imprisonment is a waste of taxpayer money, all while remaining ignorant to the 
fact that the death penalty costs higher—by more than a factor of 18 in 
California.

Capital punishment is a barbaric precipice of a criminal justice system already 
marred by racism and classism. The central ethos to its existence—punishment 
for the killing of a life—is diluted by contradiction: If a person kills 
another, it runs contrary to the rule of law, yet when the state does it, it is 
the rule of law.

Even more shameful than North Carolina’s continued practice of the death 
penalty, is our complacency towards it. For most of us, we view our transitory 
residence here by the context of the Duke bubble, wholeheartedly ignoring the 
blaring issues within our local and state governments that govern the community 
that we chose to be part of. Our status as Duke students extend beyond an 
Instagram bio headline. As students of Duke, we are students of Durham, 
students of North Carolina, and residents of state that possesses the authority 
to murder its citizens. As such, it is imperative that we progress the common 
interests of the community that has provided us a home. Or, perhaps, maybe it 
is true that we are nothing but a school where “the rich send their entitled 
children to trash the city.”

(source: This was written by The Chronicle’s Editorial Board, which is made up 
of student members from across the University and is independent of the 
editorial staff----The Duke Chronicle)








LOUISIANA:

In the Courts: Jury selection begins in trial of accused cop killer



Jury selection in the trial of the man accused in the 2015 murder of a 
Shreveport Police officer will begin Monday in Baton Rouge.

Grover Cannon is charged in the August 5, 2015 shooting death of SPD Officer 
Thomas LaValley when he responded to a suspicious person call in the 3500 block 
of Del Rio Street in Shreveport.

A change of venue motion was granted after defense attorneys ran a poll among 
Caddo registered voters just 2 days before Cannon’s trial was set to begin on 
Jan. 14. The poll questions linked the January fatal shooting of SPD Officer 
Chateri Payne to LaValley’s death.

After the motion was granted, inquiries were sent to judicial districts around 
the state, and the 19th Judicial District stepped up and volunteered their 
facilities and prospective jurors.

Although the jury will be empaneled in Baton Rouge, once jurors and alternates 
are selected, they will be brought back to Caddo Parish by bus where they will 
be sequestered in a local hotel for the duration of the trial.

According to 19th JDC Administrator Ann McCrory, 450 prospective jurors have 
been summoned to appear at 9:30 a.m. Monday to begin the selection process.

Cannon is being transported to Baton Rouge by the Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Office 
and will be present in the courtroom throughout jury selection. CPSO officials 
declined to give the actual number of deputies traveling to Baton Rouge citing 
security concerns.

They did, however, say they are providing bailiffs for the courtroom, along 
with deputies and members of the emergency response team (ERT) from Caddo 
Correctional Center.

The Caddo Parish District Attorney’s office is sending prosecutors Ed Blewer 
and Bill Edwards, Assistant District Attorneys, along with an administrative 
assistant.

Although only one clerk is required in the courtroom, Caddo Parish Clerk of 
Court Mike Spence said he is sending 2 from his office, to make sure there is 
backup if it became necessary. At least 1 court reporter will be there, as 
well.

Caddo District Judge Ramona Emanuel, who is presiding over the trial, also will 
travel to Baton Rouge for the duration of jury selection. It is unknown if she 
will be traveling with an assistant.

The entourage will stay in Baton Rouge hotels for the duration of jury 
selection, which could take up to a week or even longer because the jury must 
be ‘death-penalty qualified.’

Basically, that means prospective jurors not be categorically opposed to 
capital punishment, yet are not of the belief that the death penalty must be 
imposed in all instances of capital murder, and would be open to a life 
sentence, as well.

(source: KTAL news)








IDAHO:

Judge: Idaho must reveal source of execution drugs----Fourth District Judge 
Lynn Norton rules against Idaho Department of Correction

Idaho prison officials must release several documents on the death penalty, a 
judge ruled, including some that will reveal where the state obtained the 
lethal injection drugs used in its last execution, 7 years ago.

Fourth District Judge Lynn Norton found Thursday that the Idaho Department of 
Correction acted frivolously and withheld the information in bad faith when it 
mostly denied a public records request from University of Idaho professor Aliza 
Cover in 2017.

“We are studying the ruling and weighing our options with legal counsel,” 
Correction Department spokesman Jeff Ray wrote in an email to The Associated 
Press.

Prison officials have long said they fear they won’t be able to obtain drugs 
for future executions if their potential sources believe they could be exposed. 
Major pharmaceutical companies have refused to sell medications to states if 
they think they will be used for executions, forcing some states to look for 
more novel sources, including compounding pharmacies and drugs from other 
countries like India.

In her ruling, Norton said Idaho must release a receipt from the compounding 
pharmacy that provided the drugs used in Richard Albert Leavitt’s execution in 
2012. The receipt was for drugs expected to be used in a later execution, but 
none has occurred since then, and the compounding pharmacy is no longer allowed 
to provide chemicals to Idaho because it can’t comply with current regulations.

Because the information wouldn’t likely have an effect on future executions, 
the document should be released, Norton said.

Still, the department can withhold part of a document that might expose future 
suppliers of lethal injection drugs, the judge said, including the source that 
supplied the drugs used in Paul Ezra Rhoades’ execution in 2011, because it may 
still be in the business of providing lethal injection drugs.

“The information ... falls within a narrow statutory and rule exemption that 
permits withholding of a potential future source for lethal injection drugs or 
chemicals and that the agency’s interest in confidentiality and security 
outweigh the public interest in knowing this lethal injection drug supply 
source,” she wrote.

Norton also found Ray, the department’s spokesman, acted in bad faith by 
trusting that other prison officials would get him the right documents to 
release, rather than finding and reviewing them himself.

“Ray was clearly the designated records custodian for IDOC tasked with the 
statutory responsibility for maintaining and releasing those records, had been 
trained in public disclosure, and knew the records existed,” Norton wrote. 
“Yet, he did nothing to fulfill his responsibilities other than trust that 
others would.”

Because of that, Ray must pay a $1,000 fine for failing to hand over the 
records, Norton said.

She also found the department acted frivolously by neglecting to provide more 
than 600 pages of documents and ordered it to pay court costs and attorney’s 
fees for Cover, the professor who sought the information.

The department doesn’t have to reveal the identities of those who serve on 
execution and medical teams because they could potentially be at risk, the 
judge said.

Cover said in a statement that Norton’s decision brings the state closer to 
transparency.

“When the state keeps secret basic information about the death penalty, the 
public cannot ensure that it is carried out humanely or constitutionally,” 
Cover said.

(source: Lewiston Morning Tribune)








CALIFORNIA:

Gov. Newsom’s decision to shut down ‘machinery of death’ respects Constitution



The death penalty in California is irreparably broken. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 
politically courageous act of imposing a moratorium on executions deserves 
applause.

His predecessor, Jerry Brown, could have done this, but didn’t. Attorney 
General Kamala Harris could have ended the death penalty in California by 
choosing to not appeal a decision 5 years ago by federal district court Judge 
Cormac Carney, who found that capital punishment in California is so arbitrary 
as to be cruel and unusual punishment. But she did appeal.

Now, thanks to Gov. Newsom, California has joined an increasing number of 
states in halting executions. California currently has 737 prisoners on death 
row. That’s more than twice as many as in any other state, making ours the 
largest death row population in the Western Hemisphere. Sixty-one percent of 
these prisoners are black or Hispanic, and 222 (30 %) are age 60 or older.

As Gov. Newsom recognized, there is too great a danger that innocent people 
will be put to death. Since California reinstated the death penalty in 1978, 5 
condemned prisoners have been exonerated. Last year, Vicente Benavides Figueroa 
was exonerated after spending nearly 26 years on death row. The California 
Supreme Court called his convictions for sexually assaulting and murdering his 
girlfriend’s 21-month-old daughter a product of “extensive,” “pervasive,” 
“impactful” and “false” forensic testimony.

Gov. Newsom cited a study by the National Academy of Sciences that estimated 
that one out of every 25 people on death row is innocent. He explained that 
this “means if we move forward executing 737 people in California, we will have 
executed roughly 30 people that are innocent.” Moreover, every study has shown 
that the death penalty is imposed in a racially discriminatory manner. Last 
fall, the Washington State Supreme Court found that state’s death penalty 
violates its state constitution for this reason.

In 2014, Judge Carney concluded that the administration of the death penalty in 
California is so arbitrary as to be unconstitutional. He explained: “Since 
1978, when the current death penalty system was adopted by California voters, 
over 900 people have been sentenced to death for their crimes. Of them, only 13 
have been executed. For the rest, the dysfunctional administration of 
California’s death penalty system has resulted, and will continue to result, in 
an inordinate and unpredictable period of delay preceding their actual 
execution.

Indeed, for most, systemic delay has made their execution so unlikely that the 
death sentence carefully and deliberately imposed by the jury has been quietly 
transformed into one no rational jury or legislature could ever impose: life in 
prison, with the remote possibility of death. As for the random few for whom 
execution does become a reality, they will have languished for so long on death 
row that their execution will serve no retributive or deterrent purpose and 
will be arbitrary.”

Judge Carney concluded that such an arbitrary punishment violates the 8th 
Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. Judge Carney’s facts 
are unassailable. Countless factors — the process of direct review by the state 
Supreme Court, the lack of qualified attorneys to handle death penalty cases, 
the need for multiple levels of review — contribute to long delays and 
unpredictability in carrying out death sentences.

The average delay between sentencing and execution in California is 25 years. 
In the case before Judge Carney, the defendant was sentenced to death in 1995, 
and there are still appellate proceedings in his federal case.

There’s no fix for this. Proposition 66, which requires that state appeals be 
completed within 5 years, either will be ineffectual or risk grave injustices. 
Despite its mandatory language, the state Supreme Court interpreted it to be 
advisory-only.

The reality is that the initiative does nothing to solve the causes of the 
delays. Short-circuiting appeals, or proceeding without competent counsel, 
increases the risk of executing innocent people or imposing the death penalty 
when there has been a serious constitutional violation. And there simply is not 
a sufficient number of competent death penalty attorneys to handle these 
appeals.

No one disputes that Gov. Newsom has the authority to impose a moratorium on 
executions. He was clear that it will last as long as he is in office. He 
declared: “The intentional killing of another person is wrong. And as governor, 
I will not oversee the execution of any individual.”

Hopefully, California voters will finally abolish the death penalty during his 
tenure.

In 1994, Justice Harry Blackmun famously renounced capital punishment, writing 
that “from this day forward I shall no longer tinker with the machinery of 
death.” In his view, “the death penalty experiment had failed” and it was 
“delusion” to think that capital punishment in America could be consistent with 
the Constitution.

We should applaud Gov. Newsom for recognizing this.

(source: Opinion; Erwin Chemerinsky is dean and professor of law at the UC 
Berkeley School of Law----Sacramento Bee)

**********************

Newsom’s death penalty ban ignores will of the people who elected him



Gov. Gavin Newsom ignored the will of the people who put him in office when he 
announced a moratorium on the death penalty, granting a reprieve to 737 people 
currently awaiting execution.

The reprieve, which will last only as long as Newsom's in office, was issued 
despite candidate Newsom's assurances that he would uphold the law, and despite 
voters backing the ultimate penalty on 3 separate occasions.

The will of the people doesn't matter anymore, when the people in power don't 
like their decisions.

When the California Supreme Court overturned the death penalty in 1972 — that's 
why the likes of Charles Manson and Juan Corona ended up dying in prison — the 
state's voters reinstated the penalty in 1978. Two ballot initiatives to ban 
the penalty were rejected by voters in 2012 and 2016, the same year they voted 
to speed up executions.

The intent of voters is very clear: They want the death penalty on the books 
and they want it implemented.

When he was a candidate for governor, Newsom said that while he opposed the 
death penalty, he "recognizes that California voters have spoken on the issue 
and, if elected governor, he'd respect the will of the electorate by following 
and implementing the law."

But he apparently had a change of heart after taking office, particularly when 
he realized the ban on executions over the state's single-drug execution 
procedure was about to end, and that 25 people given the death penalty have 
exhausted their appeals and are ready to have their execution dates set.

"I've had to process this in a way that I frankly didn't anticipate a few 
months ago," Newsom said when announcing the moratorium. "It was an abstract 
question. (It became) a very real question. I cannot sign off on executing 
hundreds and hundreds of human beings."

This should have occurred to Newsom before he ever decided to run for office, 
assuming it's an issue he gave much thought. I also oppose the death penalty 
for many of the same reasons mentioned by the governor, but the people of 
California have spoken clearly and unambiguously on the subject, and I have to 
live with their decision.

So should Newsom, particularly after he swore to uphold the laws of the state 
of California.

"The decision of whether we have the death penalty or not is one the people 
have made over and over again through the initiative process," said Kent 
Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation. "It is 
improper for an executive to use the reprieve power to frustrate the people's 
position."

Newsom's decision is just one recent example of the willingness of elected 
officials to ignore the will of the people. There's already talk of placing 
another death penalty initiative on the 2020 ballot, and several bills have 
been introduced in the state Legislature to institute rent control, another 
initiative that was rejected in 2018. It makes you wonder why we bother to have 
elections.

Bad precedent

A congressional committee is mucking around in the affairs of Fox News in a 
manner that should concern every defender of free and independent news media. 
But because it's Fox News, none of the usual suspects have yet to protest this 
threat to our First Amendment rights.

The probe stems from a New Yorker magazine report that Fox News killed a story 
on Donald Trump's payment of hush money to stripper Stormy Daniels before the 
2016 election because 21st Century Fox Chairman Rupert Murdoch wanted Trump to 
win the election. (The story was first reported by other media in 2017.)

That prompted the House Oversight Committee to ask Fox to turn over any 
information it had about Trump's "debts and payments to silence women alleging 
extramarital affairs with him prior to the 2016 presidential election." The 
committee also wants information about any "action taken against" reporter 
Diana Falzone in "connection with attempts to report such stories," and has 
asked Falzone to turn over her notes by March 28.

Falzone worked on the story in question and was subsequently fired by Fox. She 
sued alleging gender and disability discrimination, and the case was settled 
out of court. Her attorney, Nancy Erika Smith, said Falzone is willing to 
ignore the nondisclosure agreement she signed and testify before the committee.

This is "about obstructing justice and a news organization that has become an 
arm of a campaign," Smith said. "Real journalists don't kill stories because of 
political preferences and certainly not two weeks before presidential 
elections."

I hate to break the news to Ms. Smith, but there's nothing unique about what 
Fox allegedly did. A lot of stories never see the light of day because they 
fall apart under close scrutiny, and some stories are even "spiked" because 
they would upset a major advertiser or a good friend of the owner. It happened 
to me many years ago, and my experience wasn't unique.

But regardless of why Fox killed the story, no arm of the government should be 
poking around the inner workings of a news organization, or second-guessing in 
congressional hearings the editorial judgment of decision makers. News 
organizations have a First Amendment right to publish — or not publish — what 
they please, and they can spike a story for any reason they choose. That's part 
of freedom of the press.

I get it. This involves Fox News and Trump, but even people who would like to 
see both disappear are playing with fire if they countenance this government 
intrusion into the affairs of a news organization. It's a dangerous precedent 
that can lead to more aggressive oversight in the future that can threaten the 
independence of media.

If you don't believe me, just look at the press in countries where editors and 
news directors have to worry about how the government will react to any story 
they publish or broadcast.

(source: Opinion; George Boardman, The Union)








USA:

Death penalty can’t rid world of evil



There are the crimes you hear about every day, and then the crimes that are 
difficult to ever get out of your head. Theft, fraud, drunken driving — all of 
it is terrible, and all of it blurs in headlines and news broadcasts into 
background noise. Earth is populated by the imperfect; we know that. But then 
there are the criminal acts that seem to test the notion that people are flawed 
but generally suited to our common life; offenses which, even decades after 
their commission, continue to inspire documentaries and explanatory essays, 
deep dives and revisitations, as though we are still trying, in some futile 
way, to understand them. The murders committed by Ted Bundy, for instance, or 
the innumerable crimes of the Golden State Killer, or the ever-growing list of 
abrupt mass killings, here and abroad.

Maybe it’s the inhumanity of their evil acts — not even strictly their 
brutality but their senselessness, their bizarre and pointless ends — that 
makes these perpetrators such a sticking point in our national debates about 
the death penalty. If they only look human, then the usual inhibitions we have 
around preserving human life feel less applicable.

Perhaps this is why New Hampshire state Rep. Jeanine Notter, a Republican, 
brought up the murder of Kimberly Cates during the state’s recent debates over 
abolition of the death penalty. Cates was hacked to death with a machete in 
2009 as she lay in her bed, by a pair of killers who were, by their own 
admission, just looking for a thrill. “I believe that life in prison is not 
justice for a heinous crime like this,” Notter argued in favor of retaining 
capital punishment in New Hampshire. Some Californians aired similar feelings 
earlier this month when Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, announced a statewide 
moratorium on the death penalty. “When [Newsom] told me that, a little bit of 
me died,” Marc Klaas said of the news. Klaas’ 12-year-old daughter, Polly, was 
kidnapped from her bedroom and murdered in 1993. If her killer were finally 
executed, Klaas said, “his influence would stop … I’d never have to think about 
him again.”

New Hampshire’s House of Representatives voted to abolish the death penalty, 
with numbers high enough to override a potential veto. And, despite some 
protest, Newsom’s decision to suspend California’s use of capital punishment 
stands. As the United States inches closer to total abolition of the death 
penalty, what do we do about the profound emotional reservations people air 
when capital punishment comes up for debate?

I wonder, in part, because I am not immune to those kinds of feelings — which 
were intensified when my sister-in-law was murdered 3 years ago — even though I 
rationally understand the death penalty to be an unjust and untenable 
institution. I know that capital punishment means the execution of innocent 
people, the disproportionate and unfair destruction of black lives, the killing 
of mentally ill people who could not reasonably be considered culpable for 
their crimes and, ultimately, the snuffing out of human life, no matter what 
the guilty have done. For all those reasons, I believe it should be abolished.

But any believer knows that true faith is a process of permanent conversion. 
And so this month, I sat down with a group of people who spend much of their 
time elbow-deep in hard missionary work.

Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty is a group of right-leaning 
activists who advocate for the abolition of capital punishment, often in red 
states. Heather Beaudoin, CCADP’s senior manager, told me that she came into 
this cause through her involvement in the pro-life movement in Montana, where 
she experienced what “felt like a clear call from God” to work to end 
executions in the United States. An evangelical herself, Beaudoin took the call 
seriously. When she thinks about those emotional reservations people have about 
capital punishment, she considers an alternative reservoir of feelings: her own 
belief in redemption. “God has a plan for each of us,” she said, “even when we 
make terrible decisions.”

Meanwhile, Hannah Cox, CCADP’s national manager, has a conversion story of her 
own. “I have an innate and intense need for justice,” Cox told me. “It’s why I 
formerly supported the death penalty, and it’s why I changed my mind.” Cox 
remarked on a number of reasons why she had come to believe, over a period of 
research, that the death penalty is inherently unjust: There are the high 
estimated rates of mental illness among death row inmates, the fact that 
prosecutors often ignore victims’ families who oppose the death penalty, and 
the preponderance of abuse and victimization in the backgrounds of criminals 
themselves.

“The people who get [the death penalty] are not the worst of the worst,” Cox 
said, but rather the poorest of the poor, the sickest of the sick. I pressed 
her: What about the worst of the worst, the serial killers and the unrepentant 
monsters, those so morally degenerate it’s hard to imagine them wanting 
redemption, much less achieving it? “You don’t get to have a utopia where only 
the most monstrous person gets the death penalty,” she said. As long as it 
exists, it’s going to destroy the redeemable, the sick, the innocent and the 
monstrous — and even then, only sometimes.

It’s a reasonable impulse to want to rid the world of evil. But there’s no 
earthly institution capable of reliably doing that, or even coming close. 
Perhaps that will only be possible in the final accounting of all things. Until 
then, I think, it’s better to hold out hope for redemption — and not to pursue 
evil so far that one moves away from justice altogether. Then evil wins anyway.

(source: Opinion, Elizabeth Bruenig, Washginton Post)