Executions in the u.s. began again in 1977, but the current era of sentencing started in 1973 with the first supreme court decisions overturning existing statutes. Many of the arguments relied on by the South African Court are also raised in the u.s. by opponents of the death penalty: racial bias, expense and the lack of deterrence.
There is no evidence that the death penalty deters violence. The FBI's own statistics (from 1991) reveal that states with the death penalty average 9.1 murders/100,000 people while other states average 5.1 murders.
In February 1990, the u.s. general accounting office found "a pattern of evidence indicating racial disparities in charging, sentencing and imposition of the death penalty". Years of research show that racial bias is a crucial factor. Nearly one half of those on death row are people of color. Only 2 of 272 executions since 1977 have been a white defendant/black victim.
UNDER 18 and DYING
International law prohibits the execution of anyone under the age of 18 at the time of the committed crime. Seven countries still kill children: the united states, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Barbados, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
In the u.s. 24 states allow juvenile execution. Even though there was a supreme court ruling in 1988 that disallowed execution of anyone under 16, alabama and florida have challenged the decision and resolution is still pending. Of the 116 juveniles sentenced to death in the past 20 years, 2/3 were 17 and the rest were 15 and 16. As of 1994, 9 children were killed by the state.
Death Penalty Focus has a legal tracking project which collects information on all capital cases in california from 1987 to the present. They pinpoint common problems associated with youth violence: poverty, peer pressure, inadequate parenting, child abuse, gangs, drugs, easy availability of guns, lack of education and unemployment. People born in the 1970's are living on death row. Nationwide, young offenders are 47% Black, 44% white: their victims were 65% white and 28% Black.
WOMEN
Actual executions of women is rare in the u.s.; only 520 since the first one in 1632. After 1973, 107 women were sentenced to death, but only 43-50 (statistics vary) remain on death row. Eight of the 107 are convicted of murdering their children; most typical is the murder of a husband/lover. The age range of the women remaining on death row is 21 to 76, over 2/3 of their victims are adult males. Two women, Guinevere Garcia in Illinois and Pamela Perillo in Texas, are scheduled to be killed in September 1995, pending last minute reversals.
There are eight women on death row in california. The youngest was 18 when arrested, the oldest was 50. They are all housed within the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at the central california women's facility at chowchilla. The SHU is the long term disciplinary unit; it is the most restricted SHU for women in the state. When you enter the unit, there is a large concrete slab with two tiers of cells behind it. In front of the lower cells, there is an enclosure pen created with chain link fencing approximately 5 feet containing a few tables/benches. This is the death row for women: a prison within a prison within a prison: a zoo.
The doors of the bottom tier are allowed to stay open, the women can visit with each other inside the pen, but their contact is limited to the small group of 8. The rest of SHU is a place of chaos and threatened violence: the women on the top tier are being punished with indeterminate time in small individual cells with nothing to do. There is screaming and yelling almost 24 hours a day. Many women with mental disabilities are placed in the SHU because prison officials don't know how else to manage them. It is the worst place inside a bad prison and the women on death row will spend more years there than anyone. Always isolated, they also suffer the same low level of medical care as the rest of the women at chowchilla.
The drug used in lethal injections for executions is Pavulon. It is manufactured by Organon Inc. You can write to them at 375 Mt. Pleasant Ave. West Orange NJ 07052.
The fear of random violence has forced crime to the topmost concern of citizens according to national polls (always suspect of course). The death penalty is touted as a solution to the complex societal problems that are involved in violence. Dr. Charles Friel, a criminal justice dean at the Sam Houston State University of Texas is quoted in a Dallas daily paper; "violent crime is not a problem, it's a symptom...It goes up and down with alot of other things" including economic instability and job loss. Tougher laws and longer sentences are not rational solutions, and do not deter violence. Will society put money into schools, rehabilitation, community services and jobs or will it bankrupt itself with more prisons and more victims? The death Penalty is no solution to violence.