“The US is reconsidering the death penalty”
- Interview of Austin Sarat, professor of Law at Amherst College and author of “When State kills”
- In 2006, US death sentences dropped to a 30-year low.
Austin Sarat, in 2006, US death sentences dropped to a 30-year low. Is death penalty on the defensive in the US?
I believe the US is in a period of reconsideration of capital punishment. And this rethinking of death penalty was unforeseeable a decade ago. 5-6 years ago, around 300 people were sentenced to death in the US. Death sentences fell to 114 in 2006. 53 executions were carried out in 2006. In 1999, there were 98. This change is real and the significance of the decline cannot be underestimated. Citizens sitting as jurors are half as likely to put people to death. And that despite the fact that the murder rate did not go down in the last few years and 9/11 happened. I cannot say that the US is on the edge of abolishment of death penalty but there may be a national reconsideration of it. It is the beginning of the beginning of the end of capital punishment in this country.
Why is death penalty on the decline?
It is happening for a variety of reasons. The debate is not about death penalty but about us. Is death penalty compatible with our traditional values? DNA testing forced a reconsideration of capital punishment. People in the US do not think people should be executed because they had bad lawyers, because of the color of their skins or because they committed a crime in Connecticut, 10 miles away from the New York border. There are increasing problems with lethal injections. But I have to say, the movement away from capital punishment is not a movement away from punitiveness. Jurors tend to sentence defendants to life without parole.
Is life without parole the solution to the end of capital punishment? In other words, is what inmates call “death by incarceration” less inhumane than death penalty?
-It is one of the difficult questions for abolitionists of the death penalty. Is one of the best ways to support abolition, to support life in prison without parole? There is no trade-off. The philosophical questions have been relegated by the questions about the administration of capital punishment. The system is broken. It is like an old car. One thing goes and then it is something else. You never know when the next thing is going to break. People are realizing that you can’t rely on the death penalty to be fair. Americans thought they had technology to put people to death and now that is breaking.
What about the execution of Saddam Hussein? Did it play a role in the debate about death penalty in the US?
-Yes. People had to watch the gruesome pictures of the execution of Saddam Hussein on the evening news. We want to think ourselves as civilized people. This execution was a complicated thing for American people. One might see it as an Iraqi deed and as the administration of Iraqi justice. But another way to consider it, is to say that the execution of Saddam Hussein was reminiscent of a lynching with people in ski masks and the crowd chanting taunts. It is another dent in the fender of this old car.
Can we say how long it would take before there would be a serious national reconsideration of capital punishment?
If I knew that, I would be rich (laughs). It is going to take a while. This process of the beginning of the beginning of the end will not be straightforward. In the US, there are 39 death penalties (38 states that still have it and the federal capital punishment). If New Jersey abolishes death penalty, it is not going to move people of Texas. What is probably going to happen is that several States abolish executions in fact before abolishing it in the law. We will reach a time where we realize we can live without it and take it off the books. Death penalty is heavily concentrated in 6 States including Texas, Florida and Missouri. It is not going to be neat and quick but over a period of time, these States will be seen as deviant.
But does this evolution mean, we will witness a sudden surge of life without parole sentences in the US?
-Not really. The political configuration is changing. The last few presidential elections were not about, who is tough on crime. Some conservatives in Congress like Sam Brownback support the “Second Chance Act”, a law about the rehabilitation of inmates. Even the punitiveness will come under scrutiny. Over a period of time, I do not think that the slow demise of capital punishment will be counterbalanced by life without parole.
Can we talk about a revolution of the legal system in the US?
-It is an amazing time for people concerned by death penalty. No one would have predicted that so much would have happened in the last 4 or 5 years. The day of the abolition is not in sight but not far over the horizon.
Jean-Cosme Delaloye / New York
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