Denomination	Position on the death penalty
Roman Catholic Church	Opposes
Baptist Churches	Southern Baptists support ; American Baptists oppose
Methodist Churches	United Methodist Church opposes
Pentecostal Churches	Mixed.
Lutheran Churches	Evangelical Lutheran Church in America opposes; the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod supports the death penalty.
Eastern Orthodox Churches	Oppose
Islam	The Qur'an supports the death penalty, but there is a strong tradition of mercy within the faith.
Latter-Day Saints	No official position
Judaism	Opposed by vast majority of groups (Reform, Conservative, some Orthodox)
Presbyterian Churches	Opposed by largest (PC-USA); others have no statement
Episcopal Church	Opposes
Reformed Church in America	Opposes
Unitarian Universalist Association	Opposes
United Church of Christ	Opposes

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Supreme Court Bars Death Penalty for Juveniles

The 5-4 decision throws out the death sentences of about 70 juvenile murderers and bars states from seeking to execute minors for future crimes.

The executions, the court said, were unconstitutionally cruel.

It was the second major defeat at the high court in three years for supporters of the death penalty. Justices in 2002 banned the execution of the mentally retarded, also citing the Constitution's Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishments.

The court had already outlawed executions for those who were 15 and younger when they committed their crimes.

Tuesday's ruling prevents states from making 16- and 17-year-olds eligible for execution.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, cited the fact that most states don't allow the execution of juvenile killers and those that do use the penalty infrequently. The trend, he noted, was to abolish the practice.

"Our society views juveniles ... as categorically less culpable than the average criminal," Kennedy wrote.

from http://www.nytimes.com/

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Countries whose laws do not provide for the death penalty for any crime:
 

ANDORRA ANGOLA ARMENIA AUSTRALIA AUSTRIA AZERBAIJAN BELGIUM BHUTAN BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA BULGARIA CAMBODIA CANADA CAPE VERDE COLOMBIA COSTA RICA COTE D'IVOIRE CROATIA CYPRUS CZECH REPUBLIC DENMARK DJIBOUTI DOMINICAN REPUBLIC EAST TIMOR ECUADOR ESTONIA FINLAND FRANCE GEORGIA GERMANY GUINEA-BISSAU HAITI HONDURAS HUNGARY ICELAND IRELAND ITALY

KIRIBATI LIECHTENSTEIN LITHUANIA LUXEMBOURG MACEDONIA (former Yugoslav Republic) MALTA MARSHALL ISLANDS MAURITIUS MICRONESIA (Federated States) MOLDOVA MONACO MOZAMBIQUE

NAMIBIA NEPAL NETHERLANDS NEW ZEALAND NICARAGUA NIUE NORWAY PALAU PANAMA PARAGUAY POLAND PORTUGAL ROMANIA SAMOA SAN MARINO SAO TOME AND PRINCIPE SENEGAL SERBIA AND MONTENEGRO SEYCHELLES SLOVAK REPUBLIC SLOVENIA SOLOMON ISLANDS SOUTH AFRICA SPAIN SWEDEN SWITZERLAND TURKMENISTAN TURKEY TUVALU UKRAINE UNITED KINGDOM URUGUAY VANUATU VATICAN CITY STATE VENEZUELA from deathpenaltyinfo.org

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The United States is virtually isolated in the world community as one of the few nations that continues to carry out executions of juvenile offenders. Since 2000, only five countries have reportedly executed juvenile offenders: Congo,  Iran, Pakistan, China, and the United States. However, at present time, all of these countries except the U.S. have now renounced the practice. Numerous international treaties prohibit the juvenile death penalty, the most notable being the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which only two countries - Somalia and, embarrassingly, the United States - refused to ratify. In fact, the prohibition is so well established that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights ruled in Domingues v. Nevada that executing those who committed crimes while under the age of 18 is a violation of a "jus cogens" - a sort of universal human rights standard -- making it akin to genocide, slavery and apartheid. 

The court should consider the human rights standards established by the international community and it is time that we join the rest of the world in ending this indecent practice.  

--from Stop Killing Kids: Why it's Time to End the Indecent Practice of the Juvenile Death Penalty

 

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As one whose husband and mother-in-law have both died the victims of murder assassination, I stand firmly and unequivocally opposed to the death penalty for those convicted of capital offenses. An evil is not redeemed by an evil deed of retaliation. Justice is never advanced in the taking of human life. Morality is never upheld by legalized murder. 

  Coretta Scott King

 

 

 

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More death-penalty doubts
from USA Today Editorial, July 5, 2001

O'Connor's insinuation — that the nation's legal system is actively killing innocent citizens — is supported by increasingly disturbing data. Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1973, 96 inmates sentenced to die have been freed from death row, 16 in just the past 30 months. Roughly two-thirds of all capital convictions are overturned on appeal. But because the lawyering available to death-row inmates is so uneven, few believe the appeals process catches every wrongful conviction.

As a high-court swing vote, O'Connor's opinions on matters such as capital punishment are influential. But in this case, she is hardly leading the charge. Many otherwise ardent death-penalty supporters have long since accepted that the system is flawed and called for a moratorium while it is repaired. Concurrently, public support for capital punishment has declined to a 19-year low.

Depending on who's doing the talking, the motivating fear for reform is either that the nation's legal system is discredited or that an innocent person (make that, another innocent person) will be executed. Either way, replacing death with a sentence of life without parole would settle those doubts for good. In the meantime, O'Connor's belated awareness of the systemic injustice of capital punishment handily reinforces the growing bipartisan support for a moratorium, which in turn will allow investigating lawmakers and jurists to confirm what they already suspect: The death penalty's flaws are irremediable as well as intolerable. [full article]

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As long as the death penalty is maintained, the risk of executing the innocent can never be eliminated.

Since 1973, 117 prisoners have been released from death row in the USA, after evidence emerged of their innocence of the crimes for which they were sentenced to death. There were five such cases in 2004. Some had come close to execution after spending many years under sentence of death. Recurring features in their cases include prosecutorial or police misconduct; the use of unreliable witness testimony, physical evidence, or confessions; and inadequate defense representation. Other US prisoners have gone to their deaths despite serious doubts over their guilt.  (see http://web.amnesty.org/pages/deathpenalty-facts-eng)

There is no way to tell how many of the over 750 people executed since 1976 may also have been innocent. Courts do not generally entertain claims of innocence when the defendant is dead. Defense attorneys move on to other cases where clients' lives can still be saved.

For details on just a few executed prisoners who had strong claims of innocence, see http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=6&did=111#executed.

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