Capital Punishment Fact Sheet

  1.       The governing bodies of the religious organizations that include the vast majority of citizens in the United States have issued statements opposing the death penalty (http://www.deathpenalty.net/religion.html).
  2.      There is no conclusive evidence that the death penalty deters violent crime.  States which have the death penalty do not have lower crime rates or murder rates than states without the death penalty.  (http://www.essential.org/dpic/deter.html)  A 1995 Hart Research Poll of police chiefs in the U.S. found that the majority of the chiefs do not believe that the death penalty is an effective law enforcement tool. (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org)
  3.      The death penalty costs more than life imprisonment.  It costs $2.5 million to execute a person in Illinois and only $600,000 to keep someone in prison for life.  (http://www.keynet.net/~icadp/)
  4.     The death penalty is applied unfairly.  Each year there are about 23,000 homicides in our country, resulting in about 18,000 arrests, of which about 4,000 are capitally prosecuted, and about 250 death sentences. (8) Thus, the vast majority (99%) of those potentially chargeable with capital punishment are not so prosecuted. Race and class are the most consistent predictors of who will be selected for capital prosecution  (9).  (http://www.deathpenalty.net/unfairness.html)
  5.     We are all outraged by the actions of murderers.  But in our attempts to punish the murder, very little concern is actually shown for the victim's family.  Killing the killer may satisfy our own thirst for blood, but the death penalty does nothing to help those who have been harmed.  It does not truly restore the social order breached by the offenders. (http://www.archdiocese-chgo.org/p-cc/statement.html)  Many family members of murder victims don't want the death penalty.  (http://www.mvfr.org/)
  6.      The death penalty cheapens the value of human life and may actually encourage murder because of its brutalizing effect.  (http://www.amnesty-usa.org/abolish/facts.html#9)
  7.     The United States is the only western democratic country still carrying out executions.  (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org)
  8.     Because the death penalty is a uniquely irrevocable punishment, it demands infallibility of the human beings who are part of the legal system which imposes death.  Because human beings are fallible, innocent people have been executed in the past.  (http://www.abanet.org/irr/hr/deathpen.html)
  9.      The death penalty is especially inappropriate in the cases of juveniles, the mentally retarded and the mentally ill.  (http://www.amnesty-usa.org/abolish/facts.html#6)
  10.      Public support for the death penalty drops to below 50 percent when voters are offered alternative sentences. More people would support life without parole plus restitution to the victim's family than would choose the death penalty. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org

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    Prepared by John Bagley


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