Times Commentary

California's Death Penalty:
Revenge Masquerading as Justice

SAN QUENTIN -- Rolando Cruz talked himself onto death row.

In 1985, Cruz was convicted of the kidnapping, rape, and murder of a ten-year-old girl in Illinois. In the absence of any physical evidence linking him to the crime, Cruz and his alleged accomplice, Alejandro Hernandez, were convicted on the strength of statements they made implicating each other and falsified police testimony. Cruz was exonerated after serving ten years on death row when DNA evidence proved he was not the assailant.

In January, 2000 Illinois Governor George Ryan declared a moratorium on executions after Cruz and 12 other condemned inmates had been found innocent and were released from prison. The Cruz case illuminated the fallibility of our criminal justice system when suspects unwittingly talk themselves into a corner, police lie and attorneys are incompetent. In a report released in April, Governor Ryan's Commission on Capital Punishment said the death penalty was "too flawed to fix" because it is impossible to guarantee that no innocent person would be executed.

Death penalty opponents hailed Governor Ryan's decision and the subsequent moratorium imposed by Maryland Governor Parris Glendening. But temporarily halting executions -- like the ones in California that are carried out here at this state prison's gas chamber -- fails to address the compelling reasons for abolishing capital punishment.

Even if the death penalty were meted out with absolute certainty, if every condemned person were actually guilty, it would not change the fact that, at its core, the death penalty is immoral. It is revenge masquerading as justice. It is hypocrisy at its worst -- state-sanctioned murder as the ultimate punishment for murder. This so-called "legal homicide" makes a mockery of the principles of fairness and equality upon which this country stakes its claim to righteousness.

The desire for revenge is a basic human instinct. Thus, we can all empathize with victim's families who, blinded by the grief and pain of losing a loved one, confound the death penalty with justice. But revenge is also a base instinct. And it is the government's responsibility to keep us from indulging our immoral urges, to save us from our weaker selves. Executions are an abdication of that responsibility.

Those who truly believe that our society should aspire to a system of justice no more enlightened than the Biblical code of "an eye for an eye" should know that some people's eyes are more likely to be put out than others. Not only is the death penalty unfair and deeply flawed in its conception, it is also unjust in its application.

According to the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, of the 805 people executed in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 56 percent were white and 35 percent were African-American. At only 12 percent of the U.S. population, African-Americans continue to be grossly overrepresented in the prisons, on death row and in the execution chamber.

In California the numbers are even more skewed. Death Penalty Focus, a national non-profit opposed to capital punishment, says that a third of the 511 people who have been executed in the state were African-American. Yet, 2000 Census figures show that African-Americans comprise only seven percent of the state' s population.

The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty says further evidence of the discriminatory implementation of the death penalty is the fact that while more than half of all murder victims are people of color, 80 percent of people who are executed were convicted of killing white people.

The death penalty is an immoral punishment that is frequently corrupted by error, malice and prejudice. Under our current legal system the blindfold Lady Justice wears has taken on a new meaning - justice is no longer blind, rather we have turned a blind eye to injustice.