Jonathan is, and always has been, against the death penalty because it is inhumane, unfair and arbitrary. Inhumane, because we should not take the lives of humans beings. Unfair, because almost all the people on death row could not afford to hire their own attorney and received poor representation; if they could have afforded proper legal counsel, the death penalty would probably not have been imposed. Arbitrary, because the race of the defendant and the victim often determines whether the prosecution will seek the death penalty and whether the jury will impose a death sentence.

The death penalty is not a deterrent to crime. In New York City, the murder rate has dropped dramatically in the last decade; the death penalty was in effect for only a very short time while that decrease was occurring. Across the country, the number of murders has continued to drop, at the same time that the number of executions and death sentences imposed have also dropped. States without the death penalty do not have a higher homicide rate than those with it; in fact, half of the states with the death penalty have higher homicide rates than those without (NY Times, September 22, 2000).

The death penalty costs money, draining scarce resources that could be applied to crime-fighting or other social priorities because capital punishment cases cost more because of trial preparation, trial work and appeals.

The federal death penalty, in particular, highlights the problem. Eighty percent of the cases submitted to the Justice Department by federal prosecutors for review for a death sentence involved racial minorities as defendants, according to a 2000 Justice Department report, more than half of whom were African-Americans. The Justice Department approved 211 of the requests to seek the death penalty; defendants in 75% of those cases were minority. Under the federal statute, people can be sentenced to death for crimes which are not capital crimes in the state where the crime took place. As with state cases, the cost of prosecuting a death penalty case is higher than those involving life in prison – four times as high (Survey of the Federal Death Penalty System (1988-2000).

The federal government should be leading the way in abolishing the death penalty. As a senator, Jonathan will work to abolish the death penalty.