Moratorium Now! A Progressive Jewish Response to the Death Penalty

By DANIEL SOKATCH STEPHEN ROHDE

Ask an American Jew about her feelings on the death penalty and you're likely to hear things like, "Well, I'm not in favor of capital punishment, but there are more important issues for the Jewish community to focus on," or "Jewish law supports the death penalty; the Torah is full of references to capital punishment."

A majority of Americans does support capital punishment. Most Jewish organizations have very little to say about the issue. And Biblical law indeed mandates the death penalty for no fewer than 36 offenses, from murder to desecrating Shabbat.

But that's only part of the story. Capital punishment in the United States today implicates critical criminal, racial and economic justice issues. And Jewish silence on this issue ignores the important fact that Jewish law effectively abolished the death penalty nearly 2000 years ago.

Progressive Jewish Alliance (PJA), a membership organization working on social justice issues in Los Angeles, CA, believes that the death penalty is antithetical to our progressive Jewish values. We are working for a moratorium in our state, home to America's largest death row--and we hope our work will also help fuel debate about capital punishment among American Jews beyond our region.

There are a lot of good reasons to oppose the death penalty.

The capital punishment apparatus of our criminal justice system is deeply flawed. Capital defendants are often provided with inadequate legal counsel, resulting in unfair and inequitable trials. And there is no credible evidence that the death penalty deters crime.

Even more disturbing, though, is how disproportionately the death penalty is imposed on the poor and people of color. Of the 591 people currently on California's death row, 354 are people of color. Nationally, over half of the people on death row are people of color, even though they make up only 20% of our nation's population. Almost half of those executed in the last 20 years have been people of color. Only three percent were white people convicted of killing people of color.

Statistical evidence about this disproportionate effect on people of color went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in a landmark 1987 case. Though the Court accepted the data as valid, it simply couldn't bring itself to act because "taken to its logical conclusion [the case in question] throws into serious question the principles that underlie our entire justice system." In the name of defending these flawed principles, people of color continue to crowd our death rows and die in our death chambers.

Perhaps the most powerful argument against the death penalty is the issue of innocence. More than anything else, realizing that innocent people have been--and will continue to be--executed has drained many Americans of their enthusiasm for this practice. Nothing exemplifies this concern more dramatically than the moratorium ordered by the Republican Governor of Illinois last year after his state witnessed the exoneration of 13 death row inmates-some of whom were released only when evidence of their innocence was uncovered by journalism students at Northwestern University.

All these factors have helped significantly shift American opinion about the death penalty over the last several years. Recent polls show that support for it has dropped to the lowest levels in 20 years. And significantly, 64% of Americans currently support a moratorium on executions until issues of fairness can be resolved.

 

Tachlis/Purpose is the monthly column by member organizations of the Jewish Social Justice Network, a national network of Jewish groups working in local communities to build Jewish involvement with social justice issues. In this issue, the Progressive Jewish Alliance in Los Angeles shares their work against the death penalty. We're eager to hear your thoughts, stories about your local work, and new Jewish social justice projects on the rise. Contact the JSJN at cindy@jfjustice.org.