For decades, the death penalty has been decreasing around the world, but it hasn’t disappeared yet. According to data from Amnesty International, there were 579 executions in 2021, which represents a 20% increase from 2020. 108 countries have abolished the death penalty for all crimes, while 144 countries have abolished it in law or practice. Even as executions decrease, questions about the death penalty’s place in society remain. Does it deter violent crime? How many innocent people have been executed? How does living in a society with the death penalty affect humanity’s psyche? Here are 10 articles about the death penalty:
Content warning: Non-gratuitous references to violence, murder, and executions
#1. Valuing Black Lives: A Case for Ending the Death Penalty
Columbia Human Rights Law Review | Alexis Hoag
Released in the Columbia Human Rights Law Review, this article tackles the intersection of race and death penalty in the United States. Racial disparities have long been an issue with the death penalty, leading to courts and juries treating cases with white victims as more serious. As a result, Black murder victims’ lives are – in the words of the article – “undervalued.” The death penalty also targets those Hoag describes as the “most disfavored members of society,” including poor people, people with mental illness, and Black people. Because of racial disparities, Hoag argues that the 14th amendment, which deals with equal protection under the law, could be used to challenge the death penalty. This challenge would force the government to deal with how racism and prejudice affect who the death penalty protects and who it’s reserved for. To guarantee Black victims get equal protection, the best remedy is ending death penalty completely. As Hoag says, “Rather than expand or even reform capital punishment, the only solution is abolition.”
#2. They went to prison as kids. Now they’re on death row.
The Marshall Project (in partnership with Slate) | Keri Blakinger + Maurice Chammah
According to research, there are dozens of death row prisoners who spent time in youth lockups. Most of these lockups are in Texas and are infamous for their abuse of prisoners. As the article relates, the experiences of young people in youth lockups set them on paths that led to death row. At 16, Terence Andrus went to a juvenile prison for robbery. The prison’s mission? To provide him with treatment, skills, and education. The lockup ended up exposing him to gangs, drugs, and frequent stretches in solitary confinement. After leaving the prison, 20-year-old Andrus killed two people while trying to steal cars. Andrus takes responsibility for his actions, but like many death row prisoners who went through the juvenile system, it’s clear his experiences in lockup impacted his mental health and exacerbated the abuse already suffered at the hands of his mother. While some want to believe people like Andrus are inherently criminal and violent, reality paints a much different picture. Andrus’ death sentence was initially vacated because his lawyer was proven ineffective, but on appeal, the sentence was reinstated. In June 2022, the Supreme Court declined to review Andrus’ appeal. At the time of writing, he remains on death row.
#3. Interview with Jim Brazzil
PBS Frontline
Prison chaplain Jim Brazzil has witnessed over a hundred executions. He’s been featured in media like the New York Times, where an article from 1997 describes an execution in Texas. In this interview with PBS, Brazzil discusses his feelings about his job, what he sees as his purpose, and what happens during an execution. Brazzil sees his role as that of a spiritual advisor, so he doesn’t take a position on the death penalty. He’s only focused on the needs of the prisoner as they face their death. It takes him about three days to prepare for an execution and about three days or longer to recover. As a witness, Brazzil also gets an idea of how executions affect everyone present, such as the officers and medics who are also part of the process. Throughout the interview, Brazzil repeats a variation of a specific phrase: “It’s always going to be a part of you.”
#4. Sister Helen Prejean On Witnessing Executions: “ I Couldn’t Let Them Die Alone”
NPR Fresh Air transcript
In this transcript from Fresh Air, Terry Gross interviews Sister Helen Prejean. Prejean is known for her social justice activism and her book Dead Man Walking, which was adapted into a 1995 film starring Susan Sarandon. In 1957, Prejean joined the congregation of St. Joseph and by the 1980s, she was focusing on the poor and imprisoned. In 1982, she became a spiritual advisor to a murderer on death row. She’s since accompanied six people to their executions. Her latest memoir from 2019 – River of Fire – explores her spiritual journey. In the interview, Prejean talks about her life, including what she first imagined her life would be like as a nun, her views on the church, what drew her to social justice, and more. Unlike Jim Brazzil, Prejean does take a stance on the death penalty: she’s opposed.
#5. California’s Longest-Serving Death-Row Prisoner on Pain, Survival, and Native Identity
The Marshall Project | Douglas Ray Stankewitz as told to Richard Arlin Walker
In 1978, a 21-year-old was carjacked and killed in California. Douglas Ray Stankewitz, a Monache and Cherokee Indian from the Big Sandy Rancheria, was convicted at age 20 and sentenced to death by gas chamber. After a new trial, he received another death sentence. He’s spent 43 years in prison for the crime, which he says he didn’t commit. In 2019, his sentence was reduced to life without parole, but not before Stankewitz became what’s likely California’s longest-serving death row prisoner. This article, which uses Stankewitz’s own words, describes his experiences, which include isolation, meager meals, and abuse from guards.
Stankewitz’s team has made multiple attempts to get him released. In the years since his conviction, testimony against him has faltered, most notably the testimony from one of the co-defendants, who recanted his testimony. Records show the co-defendant did not have a lawyer or parent with him despite being a minor. In light of this information, a resentencing hearing is scheduled for January 2023.
#6. Sentenced to death, but innocent: These are stories of justice gone wrong
National Geographic | Phillip Morris | Photography: Martin Schoeller
In this 2021 article and photo essay, Phillip Morris interviews people who faced execution after being falsely convicted. The subjects include Kwame Ajumyu, who lives within walking distance of Morris. Ajamu was sentenced to death in 1975 when he was just 17. The primary testimony against Ajamu came from a 13-year-old boy, who claimed he saw Ajamu and another young man attack Harold Franks, a money order salesman. No evidence – physical or forensic – connected Ajamu to the murder. He still received a death sentence. 39 years later, it came out that the 13-year-old witness had immediately tried to recant his statement, but police told him his parents would be charged with perjury. In 2003, Ajamu was released on parole after 27 years in prison. Morris’s article includes other stories as well as informational graphics on the death penalty.
#7. Why the fight for racial justice in the US requires the abolition of the death penalty
The Conversation | Bharat Malkani
A senior lecturer at The School of Law and Politics at Cardiff University, Malkani argues that the fight for racial justice in the United States – most recently manifested by the protests in the summer of 2020 – requires the abolition of the death penalty. This article explains how America’s history of lynchings, slavery, and racial violence are linked to death penalty. As an example, when campaigns against lynching caused a reduction in extrajudicial killings in the 1920s and 1930s, state-sanctioned executions increased. Racism is still baked into the death penalty today. Data shows a person is much more likely to receive a death sentence for killing a white person versus killing a Black person. If a Black person kills a white person, their chance of getting a death sentence increases even more. Malkani is the author of Slavery and the Death Penalty: A Study in Abolition (2018).
#8. The Case Against the Death Penalty
The ACLU
For those curious about why so many activists and organizations oppose the death penalty, this piece from the American Civil Liberties Union explains their stance. It first describes death penalty in the modern era beginning in 1972. The Supreme Court stated that under then-existing laws, the death penalty violated the Eighth and Fourteen Amendments. However, four years later, new state death penalty statutes had been written and several hundred had been sentenced to death. In 1976, the Supreme Court changed course, saying that “the punishment of death does not invariably violate the Constitution.” The piece then lists and explores the ACLU’s objections to the death penalty, including that the death penalty doesn’t significantly deter crime, it’s not applied fairly, and it’s barbaric to everyone involved.
#9. Meet the former state executioner who’s cheering for the decline of capital punishment in America
ABC News | James Glenday and Emily Olson
For 17 years, Jerry Givens was Virginia’s chief executioner. During his career, 25 prisoners were executed by lethal injection while 37 died in the electric chair. Not even his family knew what his job was; Givens was ordered to keep it secret. In this article from 2019, Givens describes what it was like to carry out an execution, from the physical exam that made sure the prisoner was healthy to the walk to the death chamber before 9:00 pm. After a death row inmate narrowly avoided execution – and was later exonerated of the crime completely – Givens started to doubt his role in the system. A 4-year stint in jail himself – as well as his faith – also played a part in transforming Givens into an anti-death penalty activist. The article also discusses how the death penalty (and support of it) is declining. Jerry Givens passed away in 2020.
#10. Ex-prison worker in Japan who witnessed execution speaks of shocking experience
The Mainichi | Takayasu Ogura
Alongside the United States, Japan is one of the few “developed” countries that maintains the death penalty. The specifics are often shrouded in mystery. This article translated from Japanese describes the experience of a defense lawyer who once witnessed an execution while working as a prison officer. He explains how prisoners are notified only a day before their scheduled deaths, at which point they’re taken to a room for constant monitoring. When it’s time, inmates are blindfolded and handcuffed before they’re executed by hanging. Witnessing the execution deeply affected the officer. After four years as a ministry of justice official, he resigned and became a lawyer. Currently, Japan notifies prisoners only hours before they will be executed, which many rights groups say is inhumane. As of November 2022, there were about 100 people on death row.
