By Rebecca K. Smith, CLDC Board President & Cooperating Attorney

Over 150 death row prisoners have been proven innocent and freed with the help of DNA evidence. Even more disturbing, most of the people that have been sentenced to die are poor African American men who have been convicted of killing white victims. Perhaps in light of the growing body of evidence that innocent people are being killed by state governments for crimes they did not commit, there is a growing movement of states that are outlawing the death penalty in the U.S. Last week, Nebraska joined the ranks of 18 other states that outlaw the death penalty. The Nebraska state legislature made the decision to outlaw the death penalty, but Nebraska’s Republican governor vetoed the bill. In response, the state legislature voted to override the governor’s veto, effectively abolishing the death penalty despite the governor’s objections. While it is now abolished in one more state, the majority of the states in the U.S. still allow the death penalty.

Just as in the case of illegal gay marriage (see last week’s blog), the U.S. is in a growing minority of countries that are still behind the social curve. Over 2/3 of the world’s nations prohibit the death penalty. As to the countries using the death penalty, the top five nations using the death penalty in 2014 were China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and the U.S.

Also, as is the case with gay marriage, the state laws within the U.S. are heavily divided on this issue. The following states still allow the death penalty: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and Wyoming.

This means that a crime committed by someone in Ohio may be punishable by death, but if the crime was committed a stone’s throw across the border in Michigan, that same crime could not be punished by death. This dramatic difference in penalties across invisible political boundary lines in the U.S. indicates the arbitrary nature of the penalty. In other words, the decision of life or death is not based upon the crime itself, but rather is based upon the politics and whims of whoever is in power.

In addition to the arbitrary state-by-state nature of this penalty and the fact that dozens of people on death row have been proven innocent, researchers find that the death penalty does not deter crime. For example, in 2013, the average murder rate (number of people murdered/thousand people) in states with the death penalty was 4.4, while the average murder rate in states without the death penalty was significantly lower at 3.4. In 2013, the states with the three highest murder rates, Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi, were all states that have the death penalty. In 2013, the states with the three lowest murder rates, Vermont, Hawaii, and Iowa, were all states that do not have a death penalty. So the fundamental premise underlying the death penalty — that it will deter crime — is a demonstrably false premise.

Will other states follow Nebraska’s lead? In my home state of Montana, the Republican-led state legislature came within one vote of approving a bill to abolish the death penalty this year. A similar bill was also introduced by a Republican in the Kansas state legislature this year. Most likely, these state repeals will continue to mount. Just as with the legalization of gay marriage, once the majority of states have abolished the death penalty, it will eventually be an issue that is argued before the U.S. Supreme Court to set a consistent national standard.