Demonstrators, including members of the anti-death penalty Abolitionist Action Committee (AAC) and faith leaders, protest on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court, marking the 40th anniversary of the first execution since the death penalty was reinstated, on Tuesday, January 17, 2017. Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM
On Feb. 17, 2022, a bipartisan group of 56 elected prosecutors, members of an organization called “Fair and Just Prosecution,” released an unusual and compelling statement urging that the death penalty be abolished in the United States. The heavily-footnoted statement, entitled, “Joint Statement from Elected Prosecutors Pledging to Work towards the Elimination of the Death Penalty,” is unusual because this sizable group of prosecutors representing both urban and rural areas all agree that the death penalty is “broken” and should be eliminated. It is compelling because of the sound reasons it provides for its conclusion and the data it has compiled to support that conclusion. The prosecutors who authored the statement, some of whom have prosecuted death penalty cases, come from the District of Columbia and 26 states, as diverse as Texas, New York, Pennsylvania, and Georgia, 11 of which still have the death penalty. New Jersey is not represented on that list, perhaps because New Jersey prosecutors are not elected, but appointed.
To support their conclusion, the prosecutors make points that we are used to seeing from the defense bar, including the following: In 2020, the United States was the only western democracy and the only country in the Americas to use the death penalty. The modern American death penalty costs over $1 million per death sentence while failing to act as an effective deterrent. Moreover, the death penalty has been far from foolproof with 186 exonerations of death row inmates since 1976 and information suggesting that innocent persons are on death row in this country today. Thus, the statement finds the death penalty in the United States “particularly unconscionable” given that we know that our system too often convicts innocent people.
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