LETTER TO THE EDITOR / CAPITAL PUNISHMENT (Murder by Government)

By Roger C. Kostmayer

The US remains the only developed nation that punishes convicts with death.  Both our federal government and some states, like Florida and a number of Southern states, still have a death penalty.  The data shows that a poor, INNOCENT, person of color is at greater risk of being  killed by the justice system than a rich, GUILTY white person.  It is a fact that death and years on death row for human beings who are proven to be innocent occurs far too often – and there is no way to bring wrongly accused defendants back to life, nor give them back the decades spent in prisons.

Punishments for crime over the centuries have been driven by revenge, punishment, race, class and deterrence.  Most democracies have concluded that murder by a government that forbids murder by citizens, is indefensible and ineffective.  Some argue that there are a few extremely horrific or dangerous crimes that are so heinous, perhaps serial murders and high treason, that they should be exceptions.

In Florida the non-profit, non-partisan FADP (Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty) announced that DPIC (Death Penalty Information Center) reported some 185 innocent men and women nationally on death row since the 1970s.  One life tragedy wrongly caused by our state is one life too many; 185 is unconscionable.  23 states have eliminated their death penalties and Virginia is in the final process of doing so now.

Clemente Aguire’s Florida case is a good example.  He is now the 28th exonerated death row survivor.  Clemente was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in 2006 (based on false evidence and incompetence) but, after 14 painful years in jail, all charges were dropped when witnesses testified that the two women who committed the crime had confessed.  Clemente has never been compensated for the unjust damage inflicted by our government.

This cruel, unusual, dark age and racist torture of a sentence must end.  It’s inconsistent with humanity, American values and our constitution.

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