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Why More States Should (Finally) Ban the Death Penalty

Why More States Should (Finally) Ban the Death Penalty

Most of the civilized world has come to regard killing someone held in captivity as barbaric. The death penalty has been abolished in the European Union and 19 U.S. states. Governors in four states that do permit capital punishment — Colorado, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington — have imposed a moratorium on executions.

The rest of America is getting there. For the first time in almost 50 years, less than half the public supports the death penalty, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Even states that still put inmates to death seem to be losing the stomach for it. The United States is set to carry out fewer executions this year than it has since the early ’90s.

This November, voters in two very different places, Nebraska and California, will have an opportunity to remove state-sanctioned killing from their books. (Going the other way, a referendum in Oklahoma calls for amending the state constitution to protect the use of the death penalty.)

The most heated battle over the death penalty has taken place in Nebraska. It’s also the most significant one, for it shows how conflicted even conservative Americans have become over the practice. In fact, Nebraska hasn’t performed an execution in nearly 20 years. Conservatives in red states such as Missouri, Kentucky, Kansas, Wyoming and South Dakota, meanwhile, have sponsored bills to end the death penalty.

In Nebraska, lawmakers from both parties voted last year to eliminate the death penalty and replace it with mandatory life in prison for first-degree murder. Nebraska’s pro-capital punishment governor, Pete Ricketts, vetoed the bill. The legislature overturned the veto.

Ricketts then pushed a successful petition drive to put the matter on the ballot. Nebraskans will vote on whether to accept the legislature’s decision to strike the death penalty and instead require life without parole.

The outcome is hard to predict. “In certain issues, particularly with a populist strain, Nebraska is not nearly as doctrinaire conservative as people might think,” Paul Landow, professor of political science at the University of Nebraska Omaha, told me.

Ernie Chambers, a progressive from Omaha and the longest-serving state senator in Nebraska history, has introduced a measure to repeal the death penalty 37 times. “That kind of persistence has left an indelible mark on the issue,” Landow noted.

In California, a ballot measure to end the death penalty failed four years ago. This time, there are two referendums that seem at odds with each other. One would abolish the death penalty. The other would speed up the appeals process and thus hasten executions.

The case against the death penalty is well-known by now. Capital punishment exposes a state to the moral horror of killing an innocent person. Over the past 40 years, some 156 people on death row have been exonerated, many with the help of DNA evidence.

Citing church doctrine on the sanctity of life, the Nebraska Catholic Conference is urging voters to retain the repeal of the death penalty. One who opposes abortion on “pro-life” grounds, its argument goes, must also oppose the death penalty.

There’s little evidence that the death penalty deters murder. That leaves the questionable value of retribution — that erasing the monster who committed a heinous crime will bring comfort to the victims’ loved ones.

More and more survivors are countering this line of reasoning. Despite having suffered immeasurably, they hold that executing the criminal would just add to the toll. The state would somehow be justifying the crime of murder by committing it.

The movement away from capital punishment is clearly gathering force. This is one good direction in which our history is moving.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

FILE PHOTO: Protesters calling for an end to the death penalty unfurl a banner before police arrest them outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington January 17, 2007. REUTERS/Jason Reed/File Photo

Pew Survey Shows Sharp Partisan Divide On Combating Inequality

Pew Survey Shows Sharp Partisan Divide On Combating Inequality

WASHINGTON — Americans overwhelmingly agree that the income gap between the rich and everyone else has grown in recent years, but they are divided sharply by party when asked what, if anything, the government should do about it.

Roughly two-thirds of Americans, regardless of party, agree that the income gap has increased in the last 10 years, compared with about 1 in 4 who believe the gap has stayed the same, according to a new Pew Research Center survey done with USA Today.

In this case, public opinion accurately reflects reality: Almost one-quarter of the nation’s income in 2012 went to the richest 1 percent of families, those with incomes of about $400,000 a year or more — the largest share since the 1920s, according to researchers at University of California, Berkeley.

On a related question, 60 percent of those surveyed said the “economic system in this country unfairly favors the wealthy” while 36 percent said the system is “generally fair to most Americans.”

An overwhelming majority of Democrats and a large majority of independents said government should do something about inequality. Two-thirds of Democrats said the government should do “a lot” to reduce the income gap. By contrast, among Republicans, 48 percent say government should do “nothing” (33 percent) or “not much” (15 percent) about the issue, while 45 percent said the government should act at least somewhat.

That partisan gap appears to reflect differing beliefs about what government is capable of and what causes some people to remain poor while others prosper, the survey indicated.

Large majorities of Democrats and independents see the country’s economic system as being fundamentally tilted toward the wealthy. They believe that circumstances, not who works hard, determine who becomes rich, and they support government action against both inequality and poverty.

Republicans are more likely to see the economic system as generally fair — although they are divided on that question — and only 45 percent support any government action to reduce the income gap between the rich and the rest of the population. Though skeptical about government action that appears aimed at the rich, Republicans are more likely to support government action against poverty, although many of them doubt it does much good.

Almost half of Republicans (49 percent) said the government can do little or nothing about the divide between the rich and everyone else. Democrats and independents are considerably less likely to hold that view.

Asked whether government help to the poor does more good or harm, about half of those surveyed (49 percent) said the aid does good “because people can’t get out of poverty until basic needs are met.” Roughly two-thirds of Democrats took that view.

A slightly smaller share of the public, 44 percent, said that aid to the poor “does more harm than good by making people too dependent on government.” Roughly two-thirds of Republicans took that view.

Perhaps not surprisingly, those with low incomes took a positive view of government aid to the poor. People with incomes of less than $30,000 a year said by 2 to 1 that government aid programs do more good than harm.

Americans split along similar partisan lines when pollsters asked them to choose between raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations to provide more aid to the poor and lowering taxes on the wealthy and corporations to encourage investment and economic growth
Democrats by more than 4 to 1 favored higher taxes; Republicans by 2 to 1 favored cutting them.

Self-described independents favored higher taxes, 51 percent to 36 percent, but divided almost evenly on whether aid to the poor does more harm than good.

The split is somewhat more one-sided on the question of what causes poverty.

About half of Americans say that poverty has mostly to do with “circumstances beyond (an individual’s) control.” A similar percentage said that those who are rich became wealthy mostly because they “had more advantages than others.” That view is shared by a majority of Democrats, independents and people with incomes below $75,000 a year.

A little more than one-third of those surveyed took the opposing views — that poverty mostly results from “lack of effort” and that wealth comes to those who “worked harder than others.” Republicans took that side of the debate by large majorities. A majority of those earning $75,000 a year or more said they credited the rich with working harder. That income group split evenly on the question of whether lack of hard work was the main explanation for poverty.

The public’s views on that have shifted toward the Democrats’ position over the years. During the 1960s, far fewer people were willing to blame poverty primarily on a person’s circumstances.

Regardless of their overall views on poverty and income inequality, Americans by large majorities favor two policies that the Obama administration has promoted as part of a push to deal with the issues — increasing the minimum wage and extending unemployment benefits for those who have been out of a job for a long time.

Republican leaders have opposed both proposals, but party strategists have conceded that the GOP could pay a political price for that stance. The poll underscores that caution: By 73 percent to 25 percent, those surveyed supported increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour from the current $7.25. Republicans supported the idea, 53 percent to 43 percent.

By 63 percent to 34 percent, the public approved of a one-year extension of benefits for the long-term unemployed. Democrats and independents supported the plan by large margins. Republicans were split, with 43 percent in favor and 54 percent opposed.

But Republicans who said they identify with the tea party movement overwhelmingly opposed both a minimum wage hike and an extension of unemployment benefits. Their opposition underscores a problem faced by Republican lawmakers, particularly in the Senate. Many of them have tried to appeal to tea party backers whose votes they might need in a contested primary while not alienating more moderate voters whose support they might want in a general election. On this, as on other issues, the wide divide between tea party backers and the rest of the country can make for a difficult straddle.

mSeattle via Flickr