Legislative Watch

Restore Justice: Abolish the Death Penalty

Recently Passed Legislation

The United States is taking an increasingly isolated stand for state-sponsored execution. We should punish criminals, but not at the expense of our national traditions of justice and equality.

by Russ Feingold

As we go forward into the 21st century, America has the opportunity to write a new chapter in our pursuit of justice and equality by abolishing the death penalty. It's time to question the assumptions that the death penalty is an infallible sentence and a deterrent to crime.

Last November, I invited Americans to face these important issues in a new context by introducing U.S. Senate Bill 1917, legislation to abolish the death penalty for all federal crimes.

The U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1976 that the death penalty was constitutional. Since then, the use of capital punishment has accelerated in our country while the rest of the world has increasingly abandoned it. Since 1985 more than 35 countries have abolished the death penalty or, having previously abolished it for ordinary crimes, have abolished it for all crimes. In contrast, during 1999 the United States set a new record for the number of executions in any one year since 1976: 98 death row inmates executed.

The federal government and the 38 states that allow the death penalty could learn from Wisconsin's example. Wisconsin abolished the death penalty in 1853. Yet, Wisconsin's murder rate was only 3.6 per 100,000 citizens in 1998, almost half the national murder rate. By comparison, since 1976 Texas has been the most prodigious user of capital punishment, carrying out 199 executions over the past 23 years. In 1998 the murder rate in Texas was 6.8 per 100,000 citizens, nearly double the rate in Wisconsin. This data simply highlights what other data and studies have concluded: The death penalty is ineffective as a deterrent to crime.

Perhaps the death penalty's deepest flaw in practice is its role as the endpoint of a fallible justice system. Since the 1970s, 85 people have been freed from death row because they were later proven innocent. To be applied fairly, the death penalty must be administered by a justice system free of bias. But the facts raise a real possibility of bias: 75 percent of the people on federal death row are members of minority groups, and defendants who kill white victims are more likely to receive the death penalty than defendants who kill black victims.

While sitting on our nation's highest court for more than 20 years, Justices Blackmun and Powell were many times asked to pronounce the last word on appeals of death sentences. They came to understand the randomness and unfairness of the death penalty. In 1994 Justice Harry Blackmun wrote that the death penalty experiment had failed because no combination of procedural rules or substantive regulations ever can save the death penalty from its inherent constitutional deficiencies. Justice Lewis Powell also had a change of mind and in 1991 told his biographer that he had decided that capital punishment should be abolished.

U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, Harvard 1979 with honors, sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee and is the Ranking Member on the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Federalism, and Property Rights.

Last December, Catholic and Jewish leaders launched a joint national campaign to abolish the death penalty. They join leaders from many other denominations and faiths that oppose the use of capital punishment. The American Bar Association has called for a moratorium on its use, and a moratorium has been considered by at least 10 state legislatures during the last year. Illinois Governor Ryan recently placed a moratorium on the death penalty there because so many death row inmates recently were proved to be innocent.

These developments reflect a growing awareness that the United States is taking an increasingly isolated stand for state-sponsored execution. We should punish criminals, but not at the expense of our national traditions of justice and equality. As we enter a new century in our nation's proud history, it's time to recognize the death penalty as a barbaric punishment that we should leave behind. It's time to pass U.S. Senate Bill 1917, the Federal Death Penalty Abolition Act.

For more information, you can contact U.S. Senator Russ Feingold at 716 Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, DC, 20510.

Wisconsin Lawyer