Dear Governor Schwarzenegger,

In considering whether or not to commute the sentence of Stanley Tookie Williams today, please consider the following information regarding the death penalty.

The tide of global opinion is moving steadily toward the abolition of the death penalty.  Since 1977, the number of countries that have abolished the death penalty has risen from 16 to 86.  Every year since 1997 the United Nations Commission on Human Rights has passed a resolution calling for all nations to abolish the death penalty, and a moratorium on executions.  In 2004, 75 countries co-sponsored the resolution.  In April 2005, the number was 81.  In the United States, 38 states have legalized the death penalty, yet most of these seldom use it.  Over half of all executions in the United States take place in just three states: Texas, Oklahoma and Virginia.  Opinion polls show that public support for the death penalty is on the decline, as is the rate of executions. 

The most obvious reason for abolishing the death penalty is the risk of taking an innocent life.  According to a report titled "In Spite of Innocence" (Northwestern University Press, 1992), at least 23 innocent persons have been executed since 1900.  Frances Newton, who was recently executed in Texas, was widely believed to be innocent.  Her case had all the appearances of a drug hit, whereby she was set up to take the rap for a murder someone else, possibly a drug dealer, had committed.  In 2003, the San DiegoTribune reported that outgoing Illinois Governor George Ryan commuted the sentences of 167 death row inmates after conducting a review that discovered 13 death row prisoners were innocent.  Since 1973, over 119 innocent people have been released from death rows across the country.

To those who say an eye for an eye, a life for a life, how can we justify a taking a life for nothing?

There are many other reasons to abolish the death penalty:

• Capital punishment is applied to a higher percentage of minorities than whites
• Death penalty cases are exorbitant and threaten to bankrupt townships, costing taxpayers.
• Study after study has shown that the death penalty is not an effective deterrent to crime.  Texas and Oklahoma, the two states with the most executions in 2003, saw their murder rates increase from 2002 to 2003 and both have murder rates above the national average. 
• The death penalty has been abolished in all western, industrialized nations except the United States.
• Capital punishment amounts to a form of torture, or cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment, which in the case of the death penalty continues until the person dies.

Sincerely,

Cynthia A. McKinney