The Death Penalty: America’s Shame

The United States remains on its sad, lonely path, unique among Western democracies.

There’s no doubt about Teresa Lewis’s guilt, but what has American society gained now that she has been executed? Her case is a dramatic example of the arbitrariness and injustice of America’s execution mills.

Opponents of the death penalty have demonstrated for decades that the poor, members of ethnic minorities and those not mentally able to defend themselves in a court of law are sentenced to death more often than other perpetrators. In the Lewis case, where the actual killers got off with prison sentences, the injustice was especially blatant.

Optimists like to point out that the death penalty is being applied less and less in many states. Whether that’s a reflection of a change in the American political climate is questionable. The governor of Virginia, who denied Lewis clemency and ordered the execution to proceed, even wants to expand the death penalty to cover other crimes. The United States remains the only Western democracy to continue down this sad and lonely path.