The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world today. On the issue of the death penalty, the United States has become more and more stubborn and short-sighted. It ignores the accusations of the international community and does not care.
There is no indication that the death penalty has no substantial effect on eradicating crime.
I. Overview of the death penalty in the United States
At present, there are 3800 people on the death penalty execution list in the United States, and three-eighth of the States have death penalty laws. Since 1976 resumed the death penalty, nearly 700 death penalty cases have been executed, most of which occurred in the southern United States. These people who were shot, electrocuted, suffocated or injected with deadly toxins by the US state government included women, teenagers and mental patients. In the first year of 2 1 century, the United States may execute more than 0/00 citizens, many of whom are poor, ethnic minority criminals with white victims and mental patients, and some criminals who were minors at the time of committing crimes.
Although there is a worldwide trend to abolish the death penalty, many States in the United States have greatly increased the application of the death penalty in the last 20 years, which should be regarded as part of a large-scale movement to increase the punishment for violent and non-violent criminals in the United States. In the last 25 years, the practice of felonism in the United States has led to an unprecedented increase in imprisonment rate, and hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent to cope with the increasing prison expenditure.
One of the reasons for the high imprisonment rate is the unnecessary heavy punishment for a large number of non-violent crimes and minor crimes, which leads to the death penalty being only applicable to violent crimes. Moreover, the cost of crime prevention is very high, so it is necessary to expand imprisonment and apply the death penalty. Many American policy makers often ignore the requirements of international standards related to the death penalty, which damages the reputation of the United States on human rights issues. Unless reform is carried out, the foreign policy of the United States has been and will continue to be damaged by the retention of the death penalty.
Two. Teenagers and Death Penalty
10 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that the U.S. Constitution allowed the execution of the death penalty for teenagers and mentally retarded people who reached the age of 16. According to the interpretation of the Supreme Court, the "developing standard of justice" in the United States has not developed to the point where most people in the United States resist the application of the death penalty to those who lack the ability of logical reasoning, intentional control and foresight. Obviously, in the evolution of "justice", the United States has failed to keep up with the development of world human rights standards, and this standard has just prevented the application of the death penalty to teenagers and mentally retarded people.
The United States is a world leader in the execution of juvenile death penalty. Of the six countries known to have executed juvenile offenders since 1990, only the United States executed juvenile offenders last year. In the United States, there are now 65 juvenile offenders on the death list, and there is a trend of younger execution of juveniles. Discrimination based on racial prejudice is particularly prominent among juvenile offenders. In the United States, 75% of juvenile offenders executed are colored, while nearly 90% of the victims are white. Of the nine girls executed in American history, eight were African-American, and 1 was a native American. Nowadays, juvenile offenders among African-Americans and Latinos are sentenced to death more frequently than whites.
Third, mental prisoners and the death penalty
In the field of death penalty, the history of abuse, mental illness and mental retardation are not unique to juvenile offenders. In the United States, so far, 34 adults and teenagers who are known to have mental retardation have been executed, although the Supreme Court ordered that the mentally disordered person be submitted to the jury as a mitigating circumstance.
Mental illness is common among these people sentenced to death, but it is also easy to be ignored. In 1986, the Supreme Court held that mental patients could not be executed, but this decision only protected those who did not know the penalty they were going to violate and why they should violate it. Defendants with mental illness and mental retardation, even if they show a little short-lived and minimum understanding, will be considered qualified to be sentenced to death.
Fourth, the poor and the death penalty
In the United States, it is often heard that "the death penalty means that it will be obtained by people who have no money." Critics insist that the American judicial system serves the rich and criminals better than the poor and innocent. There is a lot of evidence to prove this view. Undoubtedly, how to get enough legal help for defendants and condemned prisoners who are short of money is one of the most troublesome aspects of the death penalty problem in the United States.
The death penalty system in the United States gives low priority to the agents of death penalty cases, which makes the condemned prisoners unable to get enough legal help. Lawyers who are forced to represent such cases are often suppressed and their wages are very low. Generally speaking, they are not prepared enough to represent death penalty cases effectively. For those sentenced to death, the problem of underrepresentation is particularly serious. There are hundreds of condemned prisoners in the United States who are currently unable to obtain legal representation and have no hope of finding a lawyer. There is no doubt that the death penalty in the United States is influenced by rank and wealth.
Five, the death penalty management department of racial prejudice
In the United States, compulsory acceptance of the death penalty has always been a tradition of serious racial prejudice, which violates international human rights treaties. At present, more than half of the 3,800 death row inmates are colored.
The victim's race also affects the possibility of facing the death penalty. Obviously, of the 500 people who were executed from 1976 to 1998, 8 1% were convicted of murdering white people, although about half of the murder victims in the United States were black. These figures are enough to show how indifferent the values of blacks and other colored people are in the American criminal justice system.
In the United States, the death penalty is not allowed for any crime. This leads to a large number of uncertainties and free determinants in the process of choosing who will be sentenced to death. The discretionary power granted to prosecutors leads to conscious or unconscious discrimination in case prosecution. In death penalty cases, there is also racial discrimination in jury selection. The law allows prosecutors and defense lawyers to argue freely and excludes some people from a specific jury. Although prohibited by the Supreme Court's decree, prosecutors often use this struggle to exclude ethnic minorities.