We Can Live Without the Death Penalty

According to Amnesty International’s latest report and video, the U.S. carried out 23 executions in 2017, a slight increase from the previous year’s total of 20. Even more significant is the fact that for the ninth year in a row, ours was the only country in the entire region of the Americas to put prisoners to death. The U.S. currently ranks eighth in the number of executions carried out worldwide, placing us just behind China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Pakistan, Egypt, and Somalia. Last year Guinea, Mongolia, and Guatemala did away with the death penalty, bringing to a grand total of 142 the number of countries that have abolished capital punishment in law or in practice. Bucking a global abolitionist trend, the U.S. was one of only 23 countries to execute criminals in the past year. It’s time for us to join the rest of the civilized world.

Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all circumstances and works tirelessly to abolish it. Study after study, including a report just published in Pennsylvania, has shown that the capital punishment machine is broken beyond repair. The risk of executing an innocent person remains unconscionably high. More than 150 prisoners scheduled to die in the U.S. have been exonerated in recent years, and grave doubts surround the execution of others. The death penalty has not been shown to deter crime or ensure public safety, and it is disproportionately applied to people of color and the indigent. Even Pope Francis has declared the death penalty to be “inadmissible” and a violation of the dignity of the human person.

We are Amnesty International USA Group 342, and we invite you to join us in making the death penalty a thing of the past. We meet the third Wednesday of each month at 7:30pm in Wegmans café, 50 Foundry Way (at Rt. 29) in Malvern. Our next meeting will be on August 15. For more info, contact barbquin at gmail.com. If you can’t make it to our meeting, visit Amnesty International’s urgent actions page and become a human rights hero.

We can all live without the death penalty!