{"id":142479,"date":"2010-01-05T14:55:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-05T19:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:criminaljustice.change.org:\/\/493b81b5fe73f8a8e92d15fa528a4533"},"modified":"2010-01-05T14:55:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-05T19:55:00","slug":"key-legal-group-disavows-the-death-penalty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/142479","title":{"rendered":"Key Legal Group Disavows the Death Penalty"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The death penalty has lost its last intellectual underpinning.<\/p>\n

This fall, the American Law Institute voted to abandon its long-held support for the death penalty, sending yet another signal that the death penalty in the United States is dying. The ALI\u2019s work provides a critical framework for all kinds of state laws and its support for the death penalty has long been central to the maintenance of capital punishment in the states.<\/p>\n

The organization, compromised of 4,000 judges, lawyers and law professors, voted back in October to transform its death penalty policy. I completely missed the story at the time, but Adam Liptak spread the word in a column in today\u2019s New York Times<\/a> that quickly circled the web yesterday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ALI is important on a lot of topics,\u201d Berkeley law professor Franklin Zimring told Liptak. \u201cThey were absolutely singular on (capital punishment) because they were the only intellectually respectable support for the death penalty system in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

In explaining its decision, the ALI cited many arguments from the movement to abolish the death penalty — racial disparities, uncontrollable costs, inadequate defense and the chance of executing innocent people. When the group first approved standards for death penalty statutes in 1962, the practice was untested in the modern legal framework of the United States. Three decades of cases have revealed structual unfairness and attempts to address the imbalances have failed. A preliminary report from the organization said the recommended death penalty statutes have “not withstood the test of time and experience.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The momentum is moving against capital punishment in the US as evidence builds of the practices cruelty, waste and unfairness. I wrote yesterday about county-by-county numbers in Alabama<\/a> that show a strong connection between the chance of being executed and the county where the crime is committed. New research from a University of Denver criminologist found a strong connection in Texas between race and death penalty<\/a> and also found that hiring a lawyer was almost a sure way to avoid death row. And a recent report in North Carolina found that the state would save $11millon a year<\/a> by abolishing capital punishment.<\/p>\n

These studies and stories will continue to build, but the policy shift from the ALI speaks volumes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The death penalty has lost its last intellectual underpinning. This fall, the American Law Institute voted to abandon its long-held support for the death penalty, sending yet another signal that the death penalty in the United States is dying. The ALI\u2019s work provides a critical framework for all kinds of state laws and its support […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142479\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}