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Death penalty leads to injustice

To the editor:

I am writing in response to the Nov. 8 editorial "Shepard's killers deserve death penalty." The editor suggests that the brutal circumstances surrounding the death of Matthew Shepard warrant a death sentence. I do not dispute the heinous nature of the crime committed by the killers in this case. I would like to contest the idea that the death penalty serves the interests of justice, the family and society.

The editor believes that the only true source of peace for Matthew's family would be to watch the killers die. On Oct. 27, Ignacio Ortiz was executed by the state of Arizona for brutally killing his lover and attempting to kill her children. Two of these children, searching for peace, attended the execution. A third child refused to attend because she is opposed to the death penalty. The sentence tore this family apart, rather than aiding in healing, and the same may be true for the Shepard family. A national organization, Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation (MVFR), is committed to finding peace and defying violence by preserving the lives of their victims' killers.

The editor comments on the travesties of justice generated by well-paid attorneys. The American Bar Association has called for a moratorium on the use of the death penalty because of the arbitrary and capricious way in which it is applied. Who deserves to die? Before sentencing and during appeals, attorneys argue mitigating and aggravating factors that favor life or death, respectively. The stories of those who are executed do not typically suggest that their crimes involved higher levels of violence than other murderers, but rather reflects who their attorneys were. Illinois temporarily stopped its use of the death penalty recently after releasing several death row inmates who were exonerated of guilt. Last year, Arizona considered joining the growing list of states who have banned the execution of mentally retarded inmates. Nationwide, a death sentence is 3-4 times more likely if the victim was Caucasian than if he/she was a minority. The death penalty represents a miscarriage of justice in a society that claims to embrace diversity and support intervention for the disadvantaged. We need to question our assumptions about who benefits from the use of the death penalty, given the absence of this punishment and lower violent crime rates in most of the rest of the free world.

Patrick Moran

Postdoctoral research associate, ARL