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The Role of Race, Poverty, Intellectual Disability, and Mental Illness in the Decline of the Death Penalty
Bright, Stephen B.
Bright, Stephen B.
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Abstract
Capital punishment is a difficult and sensitive topic because it
involves terrible tragedies, the murder of innocent people, loss
and suffering, and the passions of the moment. It is used in only a
very small percentage of cases in which it could be imposed and is
currently in decline. Six states have recently abandoned it, and
the number of death sentences imposed in the country decreased
from over 300 per year in the mid-1990s to less than eighty in the
last several years. And so it is appropriate for us to ask whether
death remains an appropriate punishment in a modern society,
whether it is fairly carried out without race and poverty influencing
who dies, and whether it is imposed only upon the most incorrigible
offenders who commit the most heinous crimes.