FACTS ABOUT CAPITAL PUNISHMENT -
THE DEATH PENALTY

All sides to the issue:

Early Christian views,
Death penalty data,
Countries that have stopped executions, Executions of child criminals & mentally ill, International abolition drives.

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Views of the early Christian Church:

All of the early Christian writers who discussed capital punishment were absolutely opposed to it. Christians were instructed to not execute a criminal, to not attend public executions and even to not lay a charge against a person if it might eventually result in their execution. ₁

One example is Lactantius (260 to 330 CE) who is primarily known for his books "Introduction to True Religion" and "The Divine Institutes." He wrote in The Divine Institutes, Book 6, Chapter 20:

"When God forbids us to kill, he not only prohibits the violence that is condemned by public laws, but he also forbids the violence that is deemed lawful by men. Thus it is not lawful for a just man to engage in warfare, since his warfare is justice itself. Nor is it [lawful] to accuse anyone of a capital offense. It makes no difference whether you put a man to death by word, or by the sword. It is the act of putting to death itself which is prohibited. Therefore, regarding this precept of God there should be no exception at all. Rather it is always unlawful to put to death a man, whom God willed to be a sacred creature."

This rigid opposition to the death penalty within the early Christian church might have been derived directly from Jesus' teachings.

Death penalty data:

In the United States, about 13,000 people have been legally executed since colonial times.

By the 1930's up to 150 people were executed yearly. ₂Lack of public support for capital punishment and various legal challenges reduced the execution rate to near zero by 1967. The U.S. Supreme Court banned the practice in 1972.

In 1976, the Supreme Court authorized its resumption. Each state decides whether to have the death penalty or not. As of the end of 1997, only 12 states do not have the death penalty: Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

There are a number of federal offenses that can lead to the death penalty. About 21 prisoners are housed in death row at the federal Terre Haute IN facility. One is expected to be executed in 2000-SPRING. This will be the first federal execution in 36 years.

Texas holds the record for the largest number of executions since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Virginia executes a larger percentage of its population than any other state over 1 million in population.

From 1976, when executions were resumed, and the end of 1997, there were 432 executions in the US. About 30 to 60 prisoners are currently killed annually, most by lethal injection. About 90% of executions are conducted in five southern states: Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas and Louisiana. Texas leads the other states in number of killings. As of the end of 1997, there were about 3,222 prisoners on death row in 34 states. 47 (1.5%) are women. Recent laws have expanded the number of crimes for which capital punishment can be applied. Other laws have reduced some of the resources available to those on death row.

Public approval of the death penalty is currently about 70%.

About 90% of those executed could not afford a lawyer when they went to trial. They had to rely upon a court-appointed lawyer.

The homicide rate in those states with the death penalty is almost double the rate in states without the death penalty. It is not known whether this is due to:

	People in high-homicide states demanding the death penalty as a perceived deterrent, or
	use of the death penalty cheapens the value of life, and causes a higher homicide rate.

Essentially all of the persons executed are male. since 1976 when executions resumed, there have only been three women executed. These include:

	1984: Velma Barfield, put to death in North Carolina for poisoning her fiancé.
	1998-FEB-3: Karla Faye Tucker, 38, in Texas. She was convicted of killing two people in 1983 with a pickax. She was the first woman since 1863 to be executed in that state. She had repented of her crimes, and been "born again" during her 14 years of imprisonment . Her case received a great deal of publicity. Many individuals and groups pleaded for clemency. This included Fundamentalist Teleminister Pat Robertson; Ron Carlson (brother of victim Deborah Thornton); Peggy Kurtz, (sister of victim Jerry Dean); Paul Ward, a juror who convicted Tucker; and even her arresting officer, J.C. Mosier. ₃
	1998-MAR-30: Judy Beenano, aged 54, in Florida. She was called the "Black Widow" for poisoning her husband, drowning her son and trying to blow up her fiancé. She was the first woman to be executed in Florida since 1848.

In 1997, the American Bar Association called for a suspension of the death penalty, until new policies are implemented to make certain that "death penalty cases are administered fairly and impartially, in accordance with due process, and...minimize the risk that innocent persons may be executed." They are also opposed to the execution of mentally retarded individuals and those who were under 18 at the time of the crime. ₄

Canada does not have a death penalty. The most serious sentence is life imprisonment with no possibility of parole for 25 years. Public opinion polls show that over 70% of the adult population would like to see a return of hanging for first degree murder. The Roman Catholic Church and liberal churches wish to continue the present status; conservative Protestant denominations are overwhelmingly in favor of a return to capital punishment. The homicide rate in Canada has been gradually dropping since executions were stopped.

Relatively few other developed countries in the world impose the death penalty. Japan and South Korea are the only established democracies in the world, other than the US, which still conducts executions. Japan has a small fraction of the execution rate compared with the US.

Some countries, such as Italy, routinely refuse to extradite accused murderers to the US because of the possibility that they might be executed. Canada originally refused to extradite suspected mass murderer Charles Ng to California for a trial. The government ruling was later overturned by Canada's Supreme Court.

There are 7 main methods of execution in current use worldwide: ₅

	Hanging: if properly conducted, this is a humane method. The neck is broken and death comes quickly. However, if the free-fall distance is inadequate, the prisoner ends up slowly being strangled to death. If it is too great, the rope will tear his/her head off.
	Electric chair: Nobody knows how quickly a person dies from the electric shock, or what they experience. The ACLU describes two cases where prisoners apparently lived for 4 to 10 minutes before expiring.
	Firing squad: The prisoner is shot through the heart by multiple marksmen. Death appears to be quick, assuming the killers don't miss.
	Gas chamber: Cyanide is dropped into acid producing Hydrogen Cyanide, a deadly gas. This takes many minutes of agony before a person dies.
	Lethal injection: Lethal drugs are injected into the prisoner while he lays strapped down to a table. If properly conducted, the prisoner fades quickly into unconsciousness. If the dosage of drugs is too low, the person may linger for many minutes, experiencing paralysis.
	Guillotine: A famous French invention, not used in North America. It severs the neck. Death comes quickly.
	Stoning: The prisoner is pelted with rocks until they eventually die. Not used in North America. Used in some Muslim countries as a penalty for murder, adultery and other crimes.

Countries that have abolished the death penalty recently:

Year	Abolished death penalty for all crimes	Abolished death penalty for ordinary crimes
1976	Portugal	Canada
1977
1978	Denmark	Spain
1979	Luxembourg, Nicaragua, Norway	Brazil, Fiji, Peru
1980
1981	France, Cape Verde
1982	Netherlands
1983		Cyprus, El Salvador
1984		Argentina
1985	Australia
1986
1987	Haiti, Liechtenstein, German Democratic Republic
1988
1989	Cambodia, New Zealand, Romania, Slovenia
1990	Andorra, Croatia, Czech & Slovak Federal Republic,Hungary, Ireland, Mozambique, Namibia, São Tomé, Principe	Nepal
1991	Slovenia, Croatia
1992	Angola, Switzerland	Paraguay
1993	Greece, Guinea-Bissau, Hong Kong
1994	Italy
1995	Mauritius, Moldova, Spain	South Africa
1996	Belgium
1999	Bermuda

* Russia and many more countries not listed above retain capital punishment statutes on their books, but have not executed criminals in many years. Russia, for example, executed its last prisoner on death row in 1996.

Countries that execute child criminals and the mentally ill:

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the American Convention on Human Rights, and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child prohibit a person who has committed a crime while a child (under the age of 18) from being executed. Only 5 countries are known to have violated these conventions since 1990: Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, United States (Texas and Virginia), and Yemen. Yemen has since abolished the practice.

The United States Senate ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1992, conditional on the continued right of individual states to impose the death penalty on child murderers - those under the age of 18 when the crime was committed. According to Amnesty International USA:

	"...The United Nations Human Rights Committee, the expert body which oversees countries compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), as well as many other international experts, have stated that this US reservation to the ICCPR should be withdrawn as it is incompatible with the treaty and therefore invalid."
	"...11 countries have expressly voiced their objections to the US reservation on the same grounds."
	"...the ban on the death penalty against child offenders is so widely agreed and adhered to that it is considered a principle of customary international law, binding on all countries regardless of which international treaties they have or have not ratified." ₆

The United States and a few other countries also allow mentally ill persons to be sentenced to death.

International abolition efforts; Moratorium 2000:

	1998-DEC-25: Pope John Paul II called for a worldwide moratorium on the use of the death penalty. He later repeated this call during visits to the U.S. and Mexico.
	1999-SPRING: During 1999-SPRING, the United Nations' Commission for Human Rights held a meeting at Geneva, Switzerland. They discussed calling for a world-wide abolition of the death penalty. They failed. However, they were able to obtain a consensus for a moratorium that might eventually lead to an abolition.
	2000-APR: "Moratorium 2000" is a petition being circulated around the world, calling for a cessation on the use of the death penalty. As of 2000-APR, almost 2 million people have signed the petition. Sr. Helen Prejean leads the petition drive in the U.S. She is a Roman Catholic nun, and author of the book Dead Man Walking. She is hoping to deliver one million American signatures to the United Nations on Human Rights Day, 2000-DEC-10. She has said: "In a protracted war, the first step towards peace is a cease-fire. Peace always comes in steps and the first step is to cease and desist from killing which, of course, is a moratorium."

References used:

D.W. Bercot, "Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up," Scroll Publishing, Tyler, TX, (1989) Pages 105-106.
"The Death Penalty", Briefing report, American Civil Liberties Union, at: http://www.aclu.org/library/pbp8.html
"Execution a no-win situation for Governor," The Guardian, 1997-DEC-20, http://www.smh.com.au/daily/content/971220/world/world5.html (link may be defunct)
"Recommendation as approved by the ABA House of Delegates February 3, 1997," American Bar Association, at: http://www.abanet.org/irr/rec107.html
"The Death Penalty", Briefing report, American Civil Liberties Union, at: http://www.aclu.org/library/pbp8.html
Letter from Amnesty International to the Governor of Virginia, 2000-JAN-13, at: http://www.amnestyusa.org/news/2000/25100800.htm
Moratorium 2000 promotes the temporary cessation of executions worldwide. See: http://www.moratorium2000.org/
"Federal death penalty," Friends Committee on National Legislation, at: http://www.fcnl.org/issues/cri/sup/dea_short.htm

FACTS ABOUT CAPITAL PUNISHMENT - THE DEATH PENALTY