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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Oct. 16, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Editorial: Abolish the death penalty

There is murder. There is racist murder. And then there is racist murder blessed by the capitalist state and carried out over and over. That's the death penalty in the United States today.

Here it is, only October--and more people have already been executed this year in this country than in any other full year since legal murder was reinstated in 1976.

With the lethal injection of Dwight Adanandus in Huntsville, Texas, 57 of the over 3,000 death-row inmates have been executed this year--30 in Texas alone. The previous maximum was 56 at the end of 1995. And 1997 isn't even over yet.

There are 3,269 people waiting on death row as new laws speed up the legal machinery rushing them to the electric chair, the gas chamber, the lethal shot.

There are many good reasons to oppose this slaughter. For one, its targets are nearly always from the poorest and most oppressed strata of U.S. society. The inequality of punishment is striking. In addition, there is always the possibility of error, especially in cases where the defendant can't afford to hire a lawyer. After the execution the mistake is final.

But the most telling argument is the obvious racism in the injustice system here. This racist bias is what once caused the U.S. Supreme Court to bar capital punishment before 1976. Now we see the results. Since 1976, of the 415 people executed, 152 were Black. That's over 36 percent; African Americans make up only 13 percent of the population.

In class society, law is written to defend the interests of the ruling class. In the United States that means laws protect the property and the political privileges of the billionaires. No boss gets executed for laying off thousands of workers, even if the layoffs drive some to an early death. No politician gets executed for ordering a war to protect Big Oil in the Middle East, no matter how many people get killed. They don't even get punished.

But the laws that protect the property of the rich are harsh.

Allowing the death penalty puts a weapon in the hands of the state authorities who can use it to reinforce this class rule. They try to use it against an outspoken political prisoner like Mumia Abu-Jamal. They wield it regularly against the most oppressed.

The only just position to take is to demand that the death penalty be abolished immediately. Stop the executions now!

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