A Presidential Perspective on Capital Punishment
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by NFP Board President Maggie Ballard

There are three topics about which I have a hard time containing my passion, excitement, and knowledge. One of those topics is the death penalty. I grew up being taught that it was wrong, then spent a short amount of time in high school wondering if it could be used in rare, extenuating circumstances (although in all honesty, I think I just wanted to have different views than my parents on something, and to fit in with some of my more conservative peers). By the time I graduated high school, I was back to being confident that Capital Punishment has no place in a civilized society. Most of the reasons I cited for being against it at that time in life were spiritual in nature. While basing one’s personal beliefs on one’s spiritual truth is completely valid, I am going to focus why the death penalty has no place in our state or our country from a legal standpoint.

To say it differently, I will never be able to support the death penalty because it goes against everything I stand for and believe about the world from a spiritual perspective. I believe that the only person that is okay to kill is the person that has absolutely nothing good inside of them. And I do not believe that there is anyone on this planet with nothing good inside of them. From a Criminal Justice standpoint, I take issue with the death penalty for four main reasons:

1. Criminal penalties are meant to serve at least one of four purposes: Incapacitation, Deterrence, Restitution, or Rehabilitation. The only function that the death penalty is proven to serve is incapacitation. There is no evidence that proves it is a deterrent. It obviously cannot rehabilitate. It is not carried out consistently or swiftly enough to be restitution—instead, it serves more as revenge. Handing out revenge is a threat to our system.
   
2. The state does not take responsibility for what it does when the state kills. Jurors make the recommendation for the death penalty but say that it's truly going to be left up to the judge. The judge passes along the jury's recommendation and says, "I'm just doing what the jury said. Plus it's not even up to me. Ultimately, it's up to the governor. They can pardon this person if they believe they shouldn’t be executed." The governor points to the recommendation of the jury and the confirmation by the judge and says, "It's really not up to me—the agents of our system have already spoken."
   On top of that, when jurors are interviewed, they often say that recommending the death penalty in the case they sat on was a gift to the victim's family - it was something they thought would make the victim's family feel better. We have a formal, rational legal system, which by definition, is not to contain ulterior motives. Our legal system is not put in place to give people gifts.
3. The number one predictor of those that will be sentenced to death is the sex of the alleged offender. This why our country has historically, rarely executed women: when women are painted in a light that matches how they are socially expected to behave, states have a hard time sentencing them to death. But a woman that goes against social norms, e.g. a lesbian or a sex worker, she is harder for jurors to take sympathy with.  
   The number two predictor of those that will be sentenced to death is the race of the person they allegedly killed. When the victim was white (non-Hispanic), the person convicted of killing them is much more likely to be sentenced to death than if the victim was non-white. When the offender is non-white and the victim is white, they are even MORE likely to be sentenced to death. People of color that kill people of color are not as likely sentenced to death. White people that kill people of color are even less likely to be sentenced to death. 
   These two predictors tell us little about the crimes that someone committed, and instead indicate that a person’s race and gender, as well as the race and gender of the victim, are key components in sentencing. Put simply, our system has cared more about the demographic information of those involved in the crime than the circumstances and nature of the crime itself.
4. Our method of execution is barbaric. Nebraskans may want to give ourselves a pat on the back for finally getting rid of the electric chair (which we were the very last state to do, and we didn’t outlaw it until 2008). However, no pats on the back shall be given. Lethal injection, while bloodless, is disguised as putting someone to sleep and letting someone die without pain. In reality, the drugs that are injected are paralyzing so that the observer cannot tell how the person responds or reacts. Autopsies, however, reveal that there is not always enough anesthetic present to have made the executed unconscious. Some autopsies show that the executed often would have felt their lungs fill with liquid and experience what would have felt like drowning. Ironically, the most quick and painless method of execution is the guillotine, but it leaves behind more blood than the state or the public feels comfortable seeing.

​All of these are concrete and well-researched, but what if each of the issues I point to above were magically fixed somehow, and our legal system could get it “right?” While I believe that God does not make junk and no human life is a waste of space, some might argue that our world would be better off overall if some people had not existed or if they stopped breathing. If the latter argument could ever be proven, then surely I would be able to agree that in that one isolated case, the death penalty would be okay to carry out, right? Wrong. Whether the responsibility lies with the governor, the jury, the judges, our lawmakers, our voters, or a shared responsibility amongst all of these, we should not be okay with any of those people being responsible for ANYONE’S death. The governor, judges, voters…these institutions are part of a collective “we” or “us.” We should not kill – not even if we don’t care what it does to “them.” So when people ask me why I am against the death penalty, you will understand what I mean by my answer: It’s not about what it does to them, it’s about what it does to us.