Frank Lee Smith said all along he didn't rape and strangle a Fort Lauderdale girl 14 years ago, even though witnesses put him at the scene of the 8-year-old's murder...
The jury convicted him...
In January [2000], Smith, after spending 14 years on death row, died of cancer.
The state didn't kill an innocent man-but it would have had Smith lived long enough.
The key witness at his trial...recanted her testimony, saying she had wrongly identified Smith because she was told that Smith, convicted of two earlier homicides, needed to be taken off the streets.
In November [2000], prosecutors agreed to DNA testing of Smith's blood so it could be compared to samples taken at the scene.
The samples didn't match. Smith, dead at 52, had been on death row for a crime he didn't commit.
"It's a nightmare" said Broward County Assistant State Attorney Carolyn McCann...
While Smith remained in prison, "the guilty person is out on the streets committing more crimes," said Barry Scheck, an attorney whose New York- based Innocence Project pushed for Smith's DNA testing...
Scheck said Smith was the 78th individual who had been exonerated withpost-conviction DNA testing in the United States; the Innocence Project has exonerated at least 10 death row inmates since 1992....

Justice should be fair and swift. In its rush to have the second, the [Florida] Legislature has been willing to sacrifice the first. DNA testing will not only lessen the likelihood that an innocent person will be killed. It's also a way to make sure the guilty party isn't still roaming the streets. [Ledger]

The death penalty is also called "capital punishment." Since capitalis means "of the head" in Latin, there are two major theories about the origin of this term. One claims that it arose from beheading. The second, more reliable claim is that it refers to the fact that the power of life and death usually resides in the sovereign or "head" of state. Indeed, such ultimate authority has often been symbolized in the blood-red robes worn by kings and queens. [Code, 450]

Ingenuity has never been spared in coming up with different, effective, excruciating, and bizarre types of capital punishment. A complete list would include over 100 varieties [Abbott]. Among the most famous and most often used, however, are these: stoning, impaling, hemlock-drinking, crucifixion, burning at the stake, drawing and quartering, and beheading by sword or guillotine.

In the United States, more refined methods have been common, including: hanging, firing squad, electric chair, gas chamber, and, lethal injection. On the bizarre side, there was also one American case of "pressing" a man to death under heavy weights. This occurred in 1692, and a popular ballad came from it:

They got them a heavy beam.
They laid it on his breast.
They loaded it with heavy stones,
And hard upon him pressed.
"More weight!" now said the wretched man.
"More weight!" again he cried.
But he did no confession make.
So, wickedly, he died.

The record states that when poor Giles Cory's tongue protruded in his agony, the sheriff pushed it back into his mouth with his walking stick. [Drimmer, 208-9]

As is true of all sentences passed upon convicted criminals, the death penalty exists in order to serve specific purposes which are directly connected to the second word in the term "capital punishment." According to legal scholars, ethicists, and theologians, an act must meet certain criteria for it to be considered a proper form of punishment: [1] The act must be imposed by a rightful authority, [2] upon someone duly convicted of an offense against the law. [3] The act must be carried out by a representative of the legal system, and [4] must involve pain, harm or unpleasant consequences. [Olen, 266f]

Legal punishments usually aim to serve four other purposes as well [Olen, 268f.]:

[1] One of those purposes is "retribution," the ancient principle of justice which holds that people who commit evil acts ought to be punished. As a principle of justice, retribution is not the same as the psychological desire for "revenge"; or "vengeance".
[2] "Prevention" of the offender's committing any further crimes is a second aim of all punishments.
[3] A third aim is that all punishments will provide "deterrence" of others from committing the crimes in question.
[4] "Reform" of the convict is the fourth aim of all punishments-except capital punishment.

When it comes to the death penalty, prevention is certain, but deterrence is not; retribution can usually be justified, but revenge most often smacks of immoral selfishness; and, of course, there is no possibility of reforming someone who has been executed.

Although capital punishment has been practiced around the world throughout history, it is no longer performed everywhere. Only two modern industrialized nations still use it: Japan and the United States. Some of the other, more backward countries which retain capital punishment include: China, Cuba, India, and Russia, as well as most Middle Eastern Islamic republics. [Sachs, 52; TIME Almanac, 163]

Even in the U.S., not all states practice capital punishment: twelve have no death penalty. [TIME Almanac, 877]

As "the law of the land", capital punishment in the U.S. comes under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Constitution. The death penalty itself has always been considered constitutional. But, in 1972 (Furman v. Georgia), the Court decided that the method of its application was not constitutional. Back then, the death penalty was handed down by judges and juries who acted upon their own arbitrary (and often biased) discretion, without guidance from any explicit legal standards. The Court ruled that such "standardless discretionary application" violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on "cruel and unusual punishment." It ordered that executions cease. Most states hurriedly re-wrote their laws. Then, in 1976 (Woodson v. North Carolina), the Court again allowed executions-so long as explicit legal standards were in place. [Olen, 265]

American slavery should remind us, however, that merely being "legal" is not the same thing as being "ethical."

The taint of "arbitrariness" has clung to capital punishment in many different ways. One example is the wide and constantly changing variety of specific crimes for which people have been executed. Customs have differed greatly from culture to culture, and from generation to generation. In England, prior to the American Revolution, there were over 350 capital offenses. Many of those crimes continued to be considered capital offenses in the American colonies. Besides murder, treason, rape, and theft, a person could also be executed for blasphemy, idolatry, witchcraft, and sodomy. [Anderson, 405] Although the number dwindled to only twelve capital offenses in the average colony by the 1700s, the number had grown much beyond that by 1900, and in 1994 Congress and President Clinton added 70 more crimes to the list. [Skorneck, A4]

In addition to legal executions, America has also had a long and grisly tradition of illegal executions, usually involving "lynchings." Between 1888 and 1918, over 5,000 persons were lynched; and between 1900 and 1962, 1,799 blacks and 196 whites were lynched. [Anderson, 407]

Blacks have always been the primary victims of lynchings, especially in Florida. Indeed,"before the mid-1920s, lynchings had been public events, often attended by hundreds, even thousands. Sometimes people hacked off pieces of the victim's body for souvenirs [and] drug stores sold postcards with scenes of lynchings." [Clark]

As for legal executions in the U.S. since 1622, records exist for some 12,000, though historians estimate the actual number to be as high as 20,000. [Anderson, 407]

The age at which people have been executed has also varied, over time, and state by state in America. This arbitrary practice ended in 1987 when the Supreme Court outlawed sending anyone younger than 16 to death row. [Barbosa, B1] Prior to that time, three states set the age limit at 15, three states at 14, two states at 13, two states at 10, and fourteen states, including Florida, had no minimum! [Anderson, 432; cf. TIME Almanac, 877] A twelve-year-old girl was hanged in Connecticut in 1786. [Barbosa, B2] The youngest person ever tried for murder in Florida was only nine, although children as young as six have been accused of murder. Between 1910 and 1954, Florida executed twelve juveniles, and 287 people younger than 18 were executed throughout the United States between 1642 and 1990. [Barbosa, B1]

Not only juveniles, but also physically handicapped and mentally retarded individuals have been executed in the U.S. and Florida. [Greenberg, A14]

However hard it is to justify executing juveniles, handicapped and retarded people, it would seem to be all but impossible to justify executing innocent people. Yet, innocent men and women have been killed. Just since 1900, at least twenty-three innocent victims have been executed in America, while over 300 others who were sentenced to death have had their sentences reduced or were entirely exonerated. [Anderson, 438; Word, B3]

Studies have shown that innocent persons have been convicted because witnesses were unreliable or perjured themselves; suicides were mistaken for murders; so-called "expert" evidence was neither impartial nor expert; police coerced false confessions out of prisoners; prosecutors committed judicial misconduct by suppressing, falsifying and misrepresenting evidence; and careless and incompetent investigations were conducted by police departments. [Drimmer, 291-312]

In light of such cases, it would seem prudent to increase the safeguards available to insure that only the guilty are executed. The trend, however, is in the other direction. [Schulz, F2; Word, B3]

Then, there is the racial bias factor. A 1990 report revealed that blacks who killed whites are sentenced to death at "nearly 22 times the rate of blacks who kill blacks, and more than 7 times the rate of whites who kill blacks." As TIME magazine put it: "Despite the many supposed safeguards, what matters most is still who you are, who you kill, and who your lawyer is." [Kramer, 32; cf. Greenberg, A14; cf. "End."]

Another bias is regional. Roughly 85% of all American executions have occurred in the South, with nearly 75% of them in Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Virginia and Georgia. [Greenberg, A14]

I could offer more details. But the time has come for me to offer some evaluation.

From a purely ethical point of view, the strongest justifications for capital punishment are that it does prevent the offender from committing any other crime; and that it does serve as retribution.

Supporters of capital punishment usually argue that it also serves as a deterrent, preventing others from committing capital crimes. Most of the evidence, however, contradicts that claim. For example, capital punishment exerts no deterrent effect upon murderers who kill in fits of rage or passion. Nor does it deter professional killers who have weighed the risks and have chosen murder as an occupation. It also does not stop people who murder out of a pathological death wish. [Olen, 270f.] Furthermore, numerous studies here and in Europe have shown that people who live in states and nations with the death penalty run a slightly higher risk of being murdered than do people in areas without it. [Chronicle, Capital, A10] Ethicists are therefore always careful to point out that "the consensus among social scientists is that no statistical studies on the deterrent effect of capital punishment yield a conclusive answer." [Olen, 271] There is simply no proof either way, and for that reason, deterrence fails as justification.

Sometimes cost is used to justify capital punishment. Some people believe that it is a lot cheaper to execute a prisoner than it is to incarcerate him in a maximum security cell for life. The facts are just the reverse, as scholars have shown for decades. In Florida, for example, the average total cost for an executed prisoner is over $3 million. For that amount of money, three prisoners could be put away in maximum security for 40 years each! [USA Today; Anderson, 433; cf. Von Drehle, A 12]] Arguments based on cost cannot justify capital punishment.

As for revenge or vengeance, ethicists remind us that "ethical" judgments are rational decisions based upon unbiased evaluations of evidence. In contrast, revenge is an emotional response. For that reason, revenge does not work as an ethical justification for the death penalty.

It may also be for that reason that the sacred writings of many religions include statements such as this from the Christian apostle Paul:

Never avenge yourselves...
Leave it to the wrath of God,
for it is written, "'Vengeance is mine,
I will repay,' says the Lord..."
'If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him drink...
Do not be overcome by evil;
but overcome evil with good. [Romans 12:19-21]

Even so, virtually all religions have not only condoned capital punishment; they have also carried it out! In the Yahwism of the ancient Hebrews, capital punishment was believed to be a divinely revealed obligation. [E.g., Deuteronomy 13:10; Rylaarsdam, 986; Collins, 385f.; Harrelson, 571] Similarly, the Christian church has a long and bloody tradition of capital punishment, vividly exemplified in the torturous executions of the Catholic Inquisition and the Protestant witchcraft trials. All the "People fo the Book"-Jews, Christians and Muslims-have claimed that support for capital punishment is to be found in the biblical concept of "retaliation." Remember this?

"Life for life,
eye for eye,
tooth for tooth,
hand for hand,
foot for foot,
burn for burn,
wound for wound, [and]
stripe for stripe." [Exodus 21:23f.]

Such believers fail to notice their own modern inconsistency, however; for the fact is that in no case except murder does anyone ever do to criminals what criminals have done to victims. They do not steal from thieves. They do not sexually assault rapists, etc. This inconsistency strongly suggests that their use of the biblical tradition is more an immoral excuse for capital punishment than it is an ethical justification of it!

Two other glaring inconsistencies exist. One of them is that while the church has almost always been in favor of the death penalty [cf. Cornell, C3, for exceptions], it is impossible to find any support for capital punishment in the teachings of Jesus. The second inconsistency resides in the fact that the most vociferous American supporters of the death penalty are the same Christians who proclaim themselves to be members of a "pro-life" movement!

Where, then, do Unitarian Universalists stand on capital punishment? Individually, our views cover the spectrum! But, as a denomination, we long ago staked out the territory we felt morally obligated to defend-and that territory's name is "abolition." As far back as the 1790s, our American Universalist forbears were leaders in various reform movements. They wanted to end slavery, to establish women's rights, and to reform the prison system. Believing that "where there is life, there is hope" for personal and individual rehabilitation, they also worked hard for the abolition of capital punishment. They considered it to be not only unchristian, but a "barbarous relick [sic] of savage ignorance" which "engenders a spirit of cruelty, and is [therefore] highly dangerous." [Miller, 502] By 1882, the General Convention of American Universalism had unanimously passed a resolution calling for the abolition of capital punishment. [Howe, 72]

The Universalist belief in "the sanctity of human life" found echoes within Unitarianism so that when the two denominations merged in 1961, they jointly issued statements of their shared beliefs [UUA Resolutions], such as the list of 10 affirmations composed by David O. Rankin, entitled, "What do Unitarian Universalists Believe?" [Rankin]

Item #6 in that list says: "We believe in the worth and dignity of each human being. All people on earth have an equal claim to life, liberty, and justice-and no idea, ideal or philosophy is superior to a single human life." [Rankin]

On Saturday, February 17th, this congregation will host the annual Florida District Unitarian Universalist Social Justrice Conference. The death penalty and the war on drugs are this year's topics. I hope you will attend.

In any case, I would remind you that we put erasers on pencils because everyone makes mistakes. When we execute an innocent person, however, there is no eraser big enough to fix our mistake. That fact, alone, is sufficient justification for us to re-think our American love affair with capital punishment. [Cf. UUASP and Rabenold] Amen.

Sources

Abbott, Geoffrey. The Book of Execution. London: Headline Book Publishing, 1994.
Anderson, Patrick R. Introduction to Criminology. Details on this Florida Southern College prof's       textbook unavailable; source is a photocopy of Chapter 14, "Capital Punishment," pp. 402-438, of       what is probably the 1993 edition from The McGraw-Hill Companies.
Barbosa, Susan. "Youths Executed Until 1987." The Ledger. 12 September 1991; B1.
Brunner, Borgna, ed. The TIME Almanac 2000. Boston: Information Please, 1999.
"Capital punishment has a 'brutalizing effect' that actually seems to incite killers…" In editorial. USA        Today. 8 April 1994; A10.
Chronicle of Higher Education. News item; no page number available. 3 January 1990.
Clark, James C. "Lynching Study: Florida Has a Grisly Distinction." The Ledger. 7 March 1993.
"Code of Hammurabi." The New Columbia Encyclopedia. New York: Columbia University Press, 1975.
Collins, Raymond F. "Ten Commandments." The Anchor Bible Dictionary. Vol. 6. New York:       Doubleday, 1992.
Cornell, George W. "Lutherans [and U.U.A.] Back Opposition to Death Penalty." The Ledger. 28      September 1991; C3.
Drimmer, Frederick. Until You Are Dead. New York: Windsor Publishing Corp., 1990.
"End the Death Penalty: Use Life Without Parole." Editorial. USA Today. 8 April 1994; A10.
Greenberg, David. "While Experts Argue Value of Death Penalty, Executions Exceeded 200." The Ledger.      16 May 1993; A14.
Harrelson, W.J. "Ten Commandments." The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible. New York: Abingdon      Press, 1962.
Howe, Charles A. The Larger Faith. Boston: Skinner House Books, 1993.
Kramer, Michael. "Frying them Isn't the Answer." TIME. 14 March 1994; 32.
Miller, Russell E. The Larger Hope. Boston: Unitarian Universalist Association, 1979.
Olen, Jeffrey and Vincent Barry. Applying Ethics, 5th ed. New York: Wadsworth Publishing Company,      1996.
Rabenold Jean, et al. "The Unitarian Universalist Case Against the Death Penalty."
      http://www.uua.org/ga/ga00/231.html
Rankin, David O. "What do Unitarian Universalists Believe?" Boston: UUA, #7090 card.
Rylaarsdam, J. Coert (Exegesis) and J. Edgar Park (Exposition). "The Book of Exodus." The       Interpreter's Bible. Vol. 1. Nashville: Abingdon, 1952.
Sachs, Andrea. "A Fate Better Than Death." TIME. 14 March 1991.
Schultz, Dave. "Innocent? So What?" Editorial. The Ledger. 15 August 1993; F2.
Skorneck, Carolyn. "Death Penalty OK'd for 70 More Crimes." The Ledger. 15 April 1994; A4.
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UUADP: Unitarian Universalists for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
     http://www.uuadp.org/contact.htm
UUA Resolutions:
     "Capital Punishment."   http://www.uua.org/actions/criminal-justice/61capital.html
      "Capital Punishment."   http://www.uua.org/actions/criminal-justice/66capital.html.
     "Death Penalty." http://www.uua.org/actions/criminal-justice/74death.html.
     "Capital Punishment." 1979. http://www.uua.org/actions/criminal-justice/79capital.html.
     "The Execution of Minors and Those Who Are Mentally Retarded." 1989.
               http://www.uua.org/actions/criminal-justice/89execution.html
Von Drehle. "Bottom Line: Life in Prison One-Sixth as Expensive." The Miami Herald. 10 July 1988;      A12.
Word, Ron. "Former Inmate 'Could Taste Scent of Death.'" The Ledger. 5 July 1996; B3.