"Lethal Injection is the Wrong Debate"

This is the opinion of Ray Krone, who spent ten years in prison for a murder he did not commit before becoming the 100th American exonerated and released from death row since the 1976 reinstatement of capital punishment.
In a January 14 op-ed in the San Fransisco Chronicle, Krone writes, "While the court wrestles with technical issues concerning the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, there's a much larger reason our country is rethinking the death penalty: the possibility of sentencing to death and executing an innocent human being." Krone notes: "Unlike almost any American, I speak from experience."
This is a great piece that indicates some of the flaws in the American death penalty that run deeper than method of execution. Read the full text here.

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Jan. 7 NYT Editorial

As the Supreme Court prepared to hear arguments in Baze v. Rees, a case out of Kentucky that challenges the constitutionality of lethal injection, the New York Times published an editorial titled "Cruel and Far too Usual Punishment."

The piece focuses on the lethal injection debate, but the paper makes some powerful statements and observations about the death penalty in its entirety:
"We believe that the death penalty, no matter how it is administered, is unconstitutional and wrong."

..."Popular support for capital punishment is, thankfully, declining in this country. The growing number of exonerations of innocent people on death row has shown that the system cannot be trusted to make such an irrevocable decision. There is considerable evidence of racial discrimination in the application of the death penalty. After years of botched electrocutions and other horrors, it is clear that the methods of taking life are barbaric."
..."In 2007, executions in this country dropped to a 13-year low, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. We believe that use of the death penalty will continue to decline, and we hope that it will eventually be banned completely. Until that time, however, the Supreme Court has a duty to ensure that it is not administered in a cruel way. Kentucky’s ill-conceived and haphazard administration of lethal injection does not meet that constitutional requirement."
Read the full editorial here.

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Supreme Court to Examine Child Rape and the Death Penalty

In early January, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Kennedy v. Louisiana, in which the justices will decide whether the Constitution allows death as a punishment for the rape of a child.

According to the New York Times, of the 3,300 inmates currently on death row across the U.S., only two face execution for crimes that did not involve a killing. Both men are in Louisiana. The Court will hear the appeal of Patrick Kennedy, who was sentenced to death in 2004 for the rape of his 8 year-old step-daughter.

No one in the U.S. has been executed for a crime other than murder since 1964.In 1977, the Supreme Court decided in Coker v. Georgia that "a sentence of death is grossly disproportionate and excessive punishment for the crime of rape and is therefore forbidden by the Eighth Amendment as cruel and unusual punishment." But concluding that the "rape of a child under the age of 12 years of age is like no other crime," the Louisiana Supreme Court concluded that death was not disproportionate for Kennedy.

In an important amicus brief to the upcoming hearing of Kennedy's case before the Court in April, the National Association of Social Workers and a group of crisis centers argued that allowing the death penalty for rape will encourage offenders to kill their victims to prevent them from reporting the sexual assault.

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