Editorial | The death penalty: Outdated, racist and far too unreliable

The death penalty and capital punishment has long been debated within and across partisan lines. While many deem it necessary to thoroughly punish the worst criminals in this country, the reality is that it actively targets people of color — particularly Black men — and serves as yet another systemic barrier to racial equity.

The state of Missouri executed Marcellus Williams on Tuesday night after the U.S. Supreme Court denied a request to delay the execution. Williams was originally charged with the 1998 murder of Felicia Gayle based on two witness testimonies despite evidence that Williams’ DNA did not match the DNA on the murder weapon.

Before Tuesday’s decision, both Gayle’s family and the St. Louis county prosecutors opposed his execution. The prosecutors “admitted they were wrong and zealously fought to undo the conviction and save Mr. Williams’ life.” 

The case of Marcellus Williams is a blatant miscarriage of justice, and it serves as another reminder that the death penalty should be unwelcome in our country. Williams is not an isolated incident, and a case like his can and will happen again.

An estimated 4% of inmates sentenced to death are innocent — a number not unlikely to be higher in reality — and the death penalty disproportionately impacts Black convicts. Since 1977, the US has executed 1,598 inmates. Over a third of them — 543 — were Black.

Capital punishment is an outdated form of justice — if one can call it that. Too often our government’s approach to death row is to kill first and think later, resulting in racially biased modern-day lynchings that are severely lacking in evidence.

While it’s easy to point to the worst criminals in our country, like the serial rapists and murderers who deserve no sympathy, and argue for the death penalty to stay, the sad truth is that for every John Wayne Gacy, there is a Marcellus Williams. Once the door opens for capital punishment, there is no way to guarantee its effective and ethical use. As long as state officials see Black men as criminals, justice by execution is a dangerous option for them to have.

Though we’ve tried to make strides into more “humane” executions, abandoning the electric chair for lethal injection and more recently adopting nitrogen hypoxia, a peaceful death is still a death. We have other means at our disposal to punish the worst offenders that do not endanger the lives of innocent people. 

While the death penalty is technically still legal in Pennsylvania, only three executions have taken place since 1978 despite having the fifth-largest death row in the country. Previous governor Tom Wolf placed a moratorium on executions in 2015, citing concerns about innocence and racial bias, which halted all executions for state crimes. 

Sitting Governor Josh Shapiro has upheld that moratorium and has asked the PA state legislature to completely disband the death penalty as an option of the courts. While this is a sound reprieve at the moment, until PA state legislators completely disallow capital punishment, it is still a threat and can be used if a future governor chooses to no longer uphold the moratorium.

Abolition of the death penalty is only the first step. Our justice system still disproportionately targets and incarcerates Black defendants that aren’t on death row. While we seek to reform our police, our courts and our prisons, we should, in the short term, at least guarantee that the wrongfully sentenced can live to see a more just world for themselves and the next generation.

The Pitt News editorial is a weekly article written by the opinions editors in collaboration with all other desk editors. It reflects the collective opinion of the current Pitt News editorial staff.