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Lance Landall:

"Any who commit murder, life in prison should receive, But not the death penalty, for such is wrong, I believe. Either killing’s right or wrong, and clearly it isn’t right, Therefore, the death penalty, we all should dismiss outright.

It’s plain hypocritical, and behaviour that’s askew, If we’re condemning killing, yet, are involved in killing too. We’re simply sanctioned killers, who also don’t have the right To kill another person; and an innocent one, we might.

Two wrongs don’t make a right; that simply, makes us more guilty, For where is our example, as we know better, don’t we? Folk can hardly be pro-life, and the sanctity of life sell, If just like a murderer, they are taking life as well.

When we kill a murderer, they’re hardly punished at all, For despite their loss of life, they’re outside the prison wall. You see, it’s behind those walls, that real punishment takes place, For behind them, just misery, twenty four seven, they face.

Imagine living alone, in a tiny death-row cell, Where every single day, is a mind-bending carousel. But leaving folk in a cell, to simply just vegetate, Isn’t to our credit either, so, let’s rehabilitate.

How we treat the offender, says a lot about us too, So, mind what you’re endorsing, be careful what you pursue. Despite what they may have done, we still should act humanely, Otherwise, we’re no better, we’re acting hypocritically.

But there is another thing, that we should consider too: What if to the gallows, friend, a judge wrongfully sends you? Yes, let the murderer live, lest an innocent man die, And we become a party to, what one could never justify."

Landall is basically explaining how the death penalty is sanctioned killing. We do not have the right to take someone else’s life, especially if the one being killed is innocent, therefore it is hypocritical

Being Human by Chris Cowdrey (on death row):

"Somewhere, in between periods of intolerance and rage

Dawned complete understanding.

There was no comprehension so profound that it flooded my conscious mind.

Instead, there were small fits of awareness.

Some subtle; many so brutal they struck with force and paralyzed my heart

and soul.

A lifetime has passed, frozen in time behind walls of cement and cages of

steel.

In my world violence, betrayal, and hatred are the creed.

Yet it is here, after a lifetime of crime, that a culmination has occurred.

A seemingly eternal damnation has made me truly aware.

It is through this blood, shit, and cum on my hands that I finally

comprehend what I am,

What I feared I could never be.

Human."

This poem provides a very personal perspective on what it feels like being on death row. The mental and psychological side of this person is nothing short of devastating and harsh. For someone else to take away someone else's feeling of being human, especially those innocent and of lesser crimes, should be looked down upon.

The Prisoner by David Taber:

"The prisoner, like a tragic actor,

Puts on a thousand faces:

A face of hatred or a face of love.

A put-on mask,

Beaten down in a pool of blood.

He swallows spoiled food,

Thrown down on a cold tray.

The prisoner labours under the cross

Of oppression,

A haggard man:

Exploited,--

Shattered even as a child.

He grew up in a foster home,

Or a shelter,

Or some cold uptown palace:

An alcoholic,

Unable to put down a drink;

A needle in his arm,

A drug addict pushing poison.

His crimes so fatal, like his face

hangs each day:

Rapist, armed robber, murderer.

The prisoner sees time,

Days unnumbered,

Alone, tormented by a troubled self,

In a dark stone cell.

His step becomes slow

Beneath the stare

Of the tall grey wall.

Threadbare, tattered prison clothes

Shine,

All state-owned.

The system bought his soul:

Some love their chains,

Some defiant after forty years,--

Even God forgot the innocent doing time.

We put on the same face in this world:

Here prisoners, prisoners until we die."

This poem expresses all the challenges of someone within the US incarceration system and all the unfortunate events leading up to being locked up. Kids are shattered and are broken with no sufficient support and never learn important lessons that set them up for success. Especially the innocent, they lose their hope in God, which is something no one should deal with; losing the only light they have.

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The Prison Policy Initiative is an independent research and advocacy group which documents and publishes about how mass incarceration negatively impacts the nation's welfare. The article that I read on the Death Penalty explained how the death penalty is both cruel and often unusual, illustrating how often times capital punishment is against the 14th ammendment which outrules cruel and unusual punishment without due process of law.

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83% of the U.S. population lives in places where the death penalty is unusual either by law or by practice.

by Rachel Gandy, July 2, 2015

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court narrowly upheld the constitutionality of a drug used to carry out executions, but one of the dissenting judges raised a more fundamental question: Is the death penalty itself constitutional? In his dissent to the Glossip v. Gross decision, Justice Stephen Breyer fiercely argued that, by today's societal standards, capital punishment is both cruel and unusual.

To prove the cruelty of capital punishment, Justice Breyer reviewed three key points. First, death sentences lack reliability because they are frequently (and erroneously) given to two types of people: those who are innocent and those whose convictions must be thrown out due to constitutional errors in their trials. Shockingly, courts and state governors are 130 times more likely to exonerate a defendant when a death sentence is imposed than when one is not. Second, capital punishments are arbitrary. Judge Breyer summarized the evidence showing that race, gender, and geography are often more influential than the severity of a crime in determining if people will be sentenced to death. Third, the long delays necessitated by due process both harm defendants and undermine any deterrent or retributive effects of the death sentence.

To me, the most intriguing part of Justice Breyer's dissent was his argument that capital punishment is unusual. He presented data to show that the death penalty has fallen out of favor nationwide. For example, the number of death sentences imposed and the number executions conducted have sharply declined in the last 15 years. (See Appendices A and B in the dissent for the graphs that correspond with these facts). Justice Breyer then makes a powerful point about how rare the death penalty has become by calculating the percent of U.S. residents who live in states that have recently conducted an execution. His findings are striking, so we used the data he provided to illustrate his argument with this graph:

To be sure, public opinion polls show consistent theoretical support for the death penalty, but the reality is that capital punishment is rarely used. Today, 19 states (and the District of Columbia) have formally abolished the death penalty, but the map below shows that a death sentence can hardly be considered "usual" punishment in the remaining 31 states:

In the 31 states that do not legally forbid the death penalty, more than a third have not actually conducted an execution since 2007. (Therefore, in total, 30 states have eliminated the death penalty either through legislative action or by common practice.) Another nine states have conducted fewer than five executions since 2007. That leaves only 11 states where the death penalty cannot be deemed "unusual."

Even in the 11 states where the death penalty isn't "unusual," three states conduct an overwhelming majority of the total executions. In 2014, 80% of all U.S. executions took place in Texas, Missouri, and Florida, where less than 17% of the U.S. population lived. That leaves 83% of the U.S. population living in places where the death penalty is unusual either by law or by practice.

The Supreme Court's decision shines a spotlight on a decades-old debate that tends to focus primarily on the cruelty of capital punishment. Justice Breyer, however, used his dissent to shift the conversation. He unequivocally showed that the Eighth Amendment's other requirement is being violated-the death penalty is increasingly unusual, and it's time to rethink its constitutionality.

Correction: The map originally published with this post incorrectly switched the colors for Vermont and Utah. This was corrected at noon on July 3, 2015.

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Justice Breyer argues the death penalty isn't just cruel, it's unusual too

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by Rachel Gandy, July 2, 2015 On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court narrowly upheld the constitutionality of a drug used to carry out executions, but one of the dissenting judges raised a more fundamental question: Is the death penalty itself constitutional? In his dissent to the Glossip v.

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The ACLU website on the Death Penalty explains the ways in which it is flawed. People are not only sentenced to death because of their crimes, other things like the quality of the defense lawyer, preconceptions having to do with race of the accused and victim, and the place in which the crime occured all play a factor. By spreading information related to the unfairness and cruelty of the Death Penalty, the ACLU allows people to become more informed members of society and enact change of their own. The ACLU also works in courts, legislatures, and communities to enact change and protect the rights of the people of the UNited States.

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The death penalty in America is a broken process from start to finish. Death sentences are predicted not by the heinousness of the crime but by the poor quality of the defense lawyers, the race of the accused or the victim, and the county and state in which the crime occurred.

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The equal justice initiative attempts to ward off death penalty by providing legal representation to people condemned to death. They also advocate for abolition of the death penalty both in the US and around the world.

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Criminal Justice Reform | Equal Justice Initiative

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EJI is working to end our misguided reliance on over-incarceration.

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Geographic Clustering of Death Penalty Sentencing 

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Geographic Clustering of Death Penalty Sentencing 

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5 Facts about the Death Penalty in the US

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5 Facts about the Death Penalty in the US

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Son of famous MLK, MLK III's thoughts for the Washington Post showed his strong support against the injustice and poor use of the death penalty.

“I do not think that God approves the death penalty for any crime.”

“Capital punishment is against the better judgment of modern criminology and, above all, against the highest expression of love in the nature of God.”

"My father also recognized 'the severity and inequality' of the death penalty. He spoke out against the disproportionate execution of young Black men, often barely older than children at the time of their crimes, whose punishments were surely influenced by their skin color."

Decades later, President Trump and his Justice Department, in their unprecedented barrage of executions, have disregarded all of the principles of humanity, decency and justice that my father preached. After a 17-year hiatus of federal executions, the Trump administration carried out a shocking 11 executions in the past seven months and scheduled two more for the final days of Trump’s time in office. It is worth noting that this bloodbath exceeded the executions of all states combined in 2020.

MLK III response :
“​​Let us move toward love, not hate. The government should not carry out any further executions.”

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All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

This amendment states that the state can not deprive someone of life without due process of law. How do we make sure that due process is followed? There have been many cases in which people who were later found to be innocent were sentenced to death. What do we do in cases in which innocent people have been executed? Once someone is dead, they can not have a second chance. While these cases are fairly rare, we still find it to be unjust and unethical to sentence someone to death, in the case that they might later be found innocent.

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Nationwide, people of color account for about 43% of total executions since 1976 and 55% of those awaiting execution.

Here is a specific example of the racial injustice within the incarceration system:
1987 - Stabbing deaths of Charisse Christopher and 2 year-old daughter Lacie Jo and sentencing of innocent Pervis Payne

Payne was sentenced to the death penalty without DNA proof.

Payne told police he was at Christopher’s apartment building in Millington, Tennessee, to meet his girlfriend when he saw a man in bloody clothes run past him. Payne, who is African American, has said he found and tried to help the victims, who were white, but panicked when he saw a white policeman and ran away.

Payne is sentenced to die on Dec. 3, but he has asked a judge to order DNA testing. At the time of his trial, DNA testing of evidence was unavailable, and no testing has ever been done in his case. A request for DNA testing, in 2006, was refused based on a Tennessee Supreme Court ruling that has since been overturned.

His recent petition said police focused almost exclusively on him as a suspect, although nothing in his history suggested he would commit such a crime. He was a minister’s son who never caused problems either as a child or a teenager.

But prosecutors alleged Payne was high on cocaine and looking for sex when he killed Christopher and her daughter in a “drug-induced frenzy.” The town of Millington is in Shelby County, which has the most death sentences and lynchings of any county in the state.

The report also takes aim at the federal government’s scheduling of executions. The first set was all white men, a move critics argue was a political calculation to avoid uproar. The federal death penalty suffers the same racial bias, according to the report. Of the 57 people on federal death row, 34 are people of color, including 26 Black men, some convicted by all-white juries, the report found.

Some past cases that provide more in-depth looks on the reformation of the death penalty:

March 2005 - In Roper V. Simmons

United States Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty for those who had committed their crimes under 18 years of age was cruel and unusual punishment.

They argued the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments forbid the execution of offenders younger than 18

This affected 72 juvenile offenders in 12 states

March 2009

Governor Bill Richardson signs legislation to repeal the death penalty in New Mexico, replacing it with life without parole.

The two prisoners who were on death row were able to go on parole.

March 2011

Governor Pat Quinn signs legislation to repeal the death penalty in Illinois, replacing it with life without parole.

15 people who were on death row at that time were resentenced to life in prison

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Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Is not death a most cruel and unusual punishment? In my opinion, there is no worse punishment than death. In many cases in which the death penalty is given execution methods could be considered both cruel and unusual. Methods of execution in the US differ by state but include lethal injection, electrocution, lethal gas, hanging, and firing squad. Death is never painless, however many of these methods are quite cruel and unusual.

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We are researching the effects and efforts to reform the death penalty in the United States of America. We both feel that there is injustice within determining whether someone deserves to die for their crime. There are way too many cases of innocent people, especially African Americans, who are sentenced to death row with no sufficient evidence to prove they killed someone. So that frustrates Ayden and I but we are both motivated to continue our research on this topic as it is very interesting.