Colorado is off death row

Execution chamber for lethal injection © lucinda devlin/ Galerie m Bochum

Another step forward towards the end of death penalty

by Sara angioletti

We all agree on affirming that human life’s value is countless and that we should treat every human being with dignity and respect. But during 2020, the debate on the right to life has raised conflicting feelings. The two most significant constants of our existence, life and death, have caused an uproar in the squares and parliamentary halls—the right to abortion, the legalization of euthanasia and finally, the death penalty.

Colorado abolished the death penalty

On March 23rd 2020, Governor Jared Polis abolished the death penalty in Colorado, USA, an event that marked a victory for some and a defeat for others. Further confirmation of how much the right to life is still debated, especially in its various political interpretations.

The new law has been applied since July 1st 2020, and it’s not retroactive. It means that those who have pending cases could still be condemned to death. However, it seems very unlikely as almost a decade has passed since the last time Colorado state sentenced someone to death and the final execution was carried out in 1997.

At this time, the only sentences that have undergone a radical change are those of the three now-former death row prisoners Nathan Dunlap, Sir Mario Owens, and Robert Ray, who now face life in prison.

But as Governor Polis said in his statement “Commutations are typically granted to reflect evidence of extraordinary change in the offender. That is not why I am commuting these sentences to life in prison without the possibility of parole. […] Rather, the commutations of these despicable and guilty individuals are consistent with the abolition of the death penalty in the State of Colorado, and consistent with the recognition that the death penalty cannot be, and never has been, administered equitably in the State of Colorado”. Therefore, the decision was made not for humanitarian reasons, but just “to reflect what is now Colorado law”.

United States and the death penalty

Colorado became the 22nd state in the United States to abolish the death penalty and reduce it to life imprisonment. As the Death Penalty Information Centre (DPIC) explains, “Colorado’s abolition of capital punishment exemplifies a nationwide trend away from the death penalty”. Many West Coast states have recently abolished the death penalty by law or limited its use, such as California and Oregon. It seems that “public support for the death penalty throughout the U.S. is near a generational low, dropping from a high of 80% in 1994 to 56% in 2019” states the DPIC.

Today, there are 28 states in the U.S. in which the death penalty is still the law, 22 in which it was abolished and 3 in which the gubernatorial moratorium is applied. As the DPIC reports, “1529 men and women have been executed in the United States since the 1970s, although executions have declined significantly over the past two decades.”

The executions were carried out only through methods approved by the constitution. Among the main ones, we find hanging, lethal injection, fire squad (or fusillade) and the electric chair. However, many state courts have banned using some of these because considered as inhuman and cruel.

Death penalty in the USA © death Penalty Information centre

But who can be sentenced to death?

The DPIC explains that all prisoners sentenced to death in modern times and those currently on death row have been found guilty of murder. However, cases of rape, mostly perpetrated by blacks against white victims, were punished with the death penalty. When the death penalty was reintroduced in 1976, the U.S. government proposed using the death penalty as a punishment for rape cases. The proposal, however, was declared unconstitutional if death has not occurred.

Death penalty in the USA should be aimed at those who have committed the worst of crimes. In some states, even those who have participated in a crime in which a murder occurred can face the death penalty, although the murder was not carried out by them directly. Furthermore, there are many aggravating or mitigating factors to be taken into consideration when a murder happens. Many consider the crime range for which the death penalty is foreseen too wide. Therefore, the sentence can be unfairly applied, as stated by the DPIC.

A much-debated case was that of Lisa Montgomery, the only woman on U.S. federal death row. Montgomery in 2007 was found guilty of kidnapping ended in death after she strangled a 23-year-old pregnant woman from Missouri. After approaching the young woman online, Montgomery met her at her home in Skidmore, Missouri, pretending to be interested in buying one of the puppies she was breeding. The woman then assaulted the girl by strangling her and removing the fetus from her uterus, then kid

It was a violent crime that shook the United States at the time. However, during the trial, the defence attorneys intentionally avoided providing the jury with crucial information about the defendant. Montgomery had been the victim of repeated abuse during her childhood and adolescence. Raped and beaten daily by her stepfather and subjected to abuse and torture by her mother, she had suffered irreparable trauma. To escape parental violence, Montgomery married at just 18 but ended up in abusive relationships. Despite having suffered unimaginable pains that caused her personality disorders, depression, and post-traumatic shock, the woman was not spared the death penalty as has happened in other very similar cases, making her story a bizarre case.

After spending the last few years in a Texas psychiatric centre, her execution was scheduled for December 2020 but postponed due to COVID-19 to January 2021. The new lawyer who had been dealing with the Montgomery case since 2012 has never stopped to ask for the sentence to be commuted to life imprisonment, arguing that the woman was seriously mentally ill at the time of the murder. The judge, however, confirmed the execution date for January 12th, 2021. The only hope was President Trump’s intervention or the waiting for the beginning of Biden’s mandate, who during the race for the White House claimed his willingness to abolish the death penalty at the federal level.

Lisa Montgomery was executed on January 13th, 2021, in Terre Haute prison in Indiana by lethal injection.

Around the world

However, if we try to look at the bigger picture, we discover that the death penalty is still well established in the judicial systems of many countries. Often applied unfairly and carried out in cruel ways, not only on adults but also on minors.

As stated by the International Observatory of Human Rights, “In 2019, there were a total of 657 executions carried out around the world, excluding China which, as the world’s most prolific executioner, refuses to issue the data. Five countries that carried out most executions were China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Egypt.”

Many of these countries applied the death penalty unfairly, as verdicts are often reached with a lack of transparency or in the absence of concrete evidence. Furthermore, the death penalty is not applied everywhere, just in the case of murder. In Saudi Arabia, for example, homosexuality is considered a crime and can be punished with the death penalty.

Children are also victims of the reckless application of the death penalty. Protected by International Humanitarian Law, minors should not and cannot be sentenced to death. Despite this, children have been killed from the 90s, especially in countries such as China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Iran, as Amnesty International stated.

Protests against death penalty in Iran © al arabiya English

Amnesty International activism against death penalty

© amnesty International

Where are we heading to?

There are still 56 countries that implement the death penalty as punishment in the world. As the International Observatory of Human Rights reports “Five countries – Mongolia, Guinea, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Chad and Kazakhstan – have all abolished the death penalty in the last few years; a promising step in the right direction for the reduction of its use globally. Additionally, the number of documented executions was the lowest in 10 years, with a 5% decrease from 2018 to 2019.” But without data on executions in China, the country with the highest number of death sentences, it is difficult to understand how things are actually evolving.

Fighting for life

Amnesty International stated that “the death penalty breaches human rights, in particular the right to life and the right to live free from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Both rights are protected under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the U.N. in 1948.”

Fighting against what the organization considers as the “ultimate, inhuman and degrading punishment” is a slow process. This battle has become one of the most important for Amnesty International. The organization has saved thousands of prisoners of consciousness from death row in many countries where repressive governments don’t allow people to express different ideas like in Egypt or Turkey, for example.

During an interview with Balkan Hotspot, the Director-General of Amnesty International Italia explained that “Unfortunately, the majority of public opinion is still in favour of death penalty. The cultural change was not so complete as we hoped it would be and there is still in the minds of most people the idea that at least in certain cases, death penalty can be justified. So some states are reluctant to delete it from their laws, it would not be well accepted by part of the public opinion so they keep it in their law but they don’t do executions, which is the most important thing for us”.

The debate remains heated: can the death penalty still represent a viable option to seek justice in the most serious crimes? Or should it be abandoned because justice is not achieved simply by denying life to those who took it from someone else?