STATEMENT ON THE DEATH PENALTY

November, 1976.

The American Friends Service Committee reaffirms its opposition to the death penalty.  We base our stand on the Quaker belief that every person has value in the eyes of God and on Quaker testimonies against the taking of human life.

The U.S. Supreme Court decisions of July, 1976, rejected the major constitutional arguments against the death penalty, which had stopped executions in the U.S.A. in the previous decade.  These decisions denied that execution is cruel and unusual punishment, citing the passage of death laws by a majority of the states in recent years as evidence that the public does not consider execution to be cruel and unusual.  In our view, alleged public support for capital punishment does not diminish the cruelty nor warrant the takingof human life.

The Supreme Court agrees that there is no conclusive evidence that the death penalty acts as a deterrent to crime.  It recognized that the continuing demand for capital punishment is in part a manifestation of a desire for retribution.  We find it particularly shocking that the Supreme Court would give credence to retribution as a basis for law.

Punishment by death is inflicted most often upon the poor, and particularly upon racial minorities, who do not have the means to defend themselves that are available to wealthier offenders.  A minority person convicted of a capital offense is much more likely to pay the extreme penalty than a white person convicted of the same crime.  Discretion as to whether to execute continues under the Supreme Court's guidelines, and minority persons will continue to be victims of this discretion.  The Supreme Court in its 1976 decision ignorest his reality.

The grossly disproportionate number of nonwhites sentenced to be executed and the continuing demand for the death penalty indicate that the death penalty may constitute an outlet for acknowledged racist attitudes.   This outlet is now legally sanctioned, but it isnonetheless morally unacceptable.

The death penalty is especially abhorrent because it assumes an infallibility in the process of determining guilt.  Persons later found to have been innocent have been executed. This will happen again when killing by the state begins anew.

It is bad enough that murder or other capital crimes are committed in the first place and our sympathies lie most strongly with the victims. But the death penalty restores no victim to life and only compounds the wrong committed in the first place.

We affirm that there is no justification for taking the life of any man or woman for any reason.