COMMENTARY: For the second session in a row the governor has called for the reinstatement of the death penalty. One can perhaps understand her motives: There have been several officers killed across the state in the last few years and at least two horrific murders of children. Nonetheless, this is not a bill that deserves to pass.
Courtesy photo
Claudia Anderson
The death penalty is becoming increasingly unpopular. Polling shows support has continued to drop over the last 17 years. In New Mexico some form a bill to reinstate has been introduced at least six times since 2009, when it was abolished. In all cases such bills died in committee.
To understand why public opinion has changed over the years, a good place to start is 2000 and the state of Illinois. Then-Gov. George Ryan called for a moratorium on executions in the state after seeing the statistics on the possibility of innocent people being executed. Eleven years later the state abolished the death penalty.
New Mexico abolished it in 2009. Although then-Gov. Bill Richardson originally strongly supported the death penalty, he signed the bill to abolish the punishment in March of that year, saying at the time that it was the end of a long personal journey.
More recently, the U.S. Supreme Court is narrowing the parameters on the death penalty. Just last week it overturned an execution on the basis of racist remarks made by a jury member. In a Texas case, justices overturned the execution based on the mental disability of the accused.
The death penalty is not particularly effective at lowering murder rates. Studies have shown that murder rates are lower in states without it.
Most murders are committed by those in a rage, for whatever reason, and at the time the remote possibility of the death penalty doesn’t really enter their thinking.
The death penalty is far harder to administer, for a long list of reasons — including the number of appeals and the real possibility of executing someone later found to be innocent. As the ACLU points out in its position paper, “its imposition is often arbitrary, and always irrevocable – forever depriving an individual of the opportunity to benefit from new evidence or new laws that might warrant the reversal of a conviction, or the setting aside of a death sentence.”
It is this, the irrevocable nature of the death penalty, that forms the best argument against it. As William Blackstone said, “It is better that 10 guilty men go free than one innocent man be put to death.”
Therefore, I respectfully request that our Legislature once again not allow this bill to come to even a vote on the floor. New Mexico should be proud of its stance on this issue.
Claudia Anderson of Farmington is a past Democratic Party county officer and member of the party’s state central committee. She has been active in several political campaigns. Today she follows politics avidly as a concerned citizen. She has been proudly voting since 1972.