For the first time since Gallup first asked the question, a considerable majority of Americans say life imprisonment is a better punishment for murder than the death penalty.
When first asked in 1985, 34 percent of respondents favored life imprisonment with absolutely no possibility for parole to 56 percent who favored execution.
Today, for the very first time, 60 percent of respondents support life imprisonment without parole for murder compared to just 36 percent for the death penalty.
Finally, a majority of Americans agree with me. And it makes sense.
Since 1973, there have been a total of 166 death row exonerations.
166 innocent people who would’ve been murdered by the state had it not been for The Innocent Project and scientific advancements in DNA identification.
Just imagine how many more innocent Americans have been murdered by the state over the years for crimes they did not commit. Men and women who were unjustly convicted and were killed via electrocution or lethal injection or worse because the evidence required to exonerate them was never found. Or covered up.
As a person who was arrest and tried for a crime he didn’t commit and nearly confessed to the crime after threats of imprisonment by police officers, I know how easily a person can be found guilty for something they did not do.
I have many reasons to oppose the death penalty. I believe that it amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. I don’t believe that the state has the right to take away a person’s life. I know that it’s more expensive to execute a prisoner than it is to incarcerate them for the rest of their life.
But all of those reasons are irrelevant and unnecessary in the face of this:
Mistakes are made in courtrooms every day. Innocent people are found guilty of crimes they did not commit. Justice is not always enacted fairly. Eye witness testimony is exceptionally unreliable. Not every police officer and prosecutor and witness tells the truth.
The existences of the death penalty all but guarantees that innocent people will be murdered by the state. For that reason alone, it must be abolished.
I’m so happy to see that a significant majority of Americans now agree.
