By Stephanie Wilkinson
In the United States there are currently more than 2500 prisoners awaiting execution. These prisoners are poor and are in their present situation because they could not afford adequate legal assistance. Most are black, because the death penalty is awarded discriminately, especially in southern states.
There are many juveniles on death row and also many people who are mentally retarded or mentally ill. Many are themselves the victims of child abuse, alcoholic parents etc.
A mentally retarded person has no chance in US courts — especially when plea bargaining takes place and co-accused are given lighter sentences for giving "evidence".
In the USA, 158 prisoners have been executed since 1977 and of these, 23 were later proved to be innocent! It is possible, indeed probable, that many more have been innocent of the crimes for which they were killed.
The most favoured methods of killing include electrocution (electric chair), lethal injection and lethal gas (gas chamber). Death in the electric chair is barbaric — prisoners experience excruciating pain as their blood boils, their skin burns and their brain cooks — they are literally cooked alive. This method is still used in Florida.
Lethal injection and lethal gas are supposedly less painful than electrocution, but there have been many reports of prisoners appearing to suffer extreme pain as they die.
During 1991 President Bush introduced legislation to reduce the rights of appeal of death row prisoners and so speed up the rate of executions. The United States is the only western democracy which still has the death penalty. Since abolishing the death penalty, both Canada and Australia, and some other countries, have experienced a lower murder rate, although this is seldom publicised in the "popular" press.
The greatest cause of crime in the US is poverty. There is high unemployment, especially for people with little education. Funds have been cut for schools and the rate of illiteracy is high. Many people live on the streets and are reduced to begging. Many people cannot afford medical insurance to pay for the high costs of medical treatment and therefore they, or their children, go without needed treatment. Public hospitals are badly underfunded, and many people die waiting for urgent attention.
The Bush answer is not to remove the causes of crime, but to kill people after they have become involved in crime, when very often they are not solely to blame for the conditions in which they find themselves. It is a government's responsibility to take care of the welfare of its people, but in the USA, it seems, the government cares only about the rich — the poor can go to hell, and usually do. The US government takes little notice of world opinion of the way it treats its poor people and even less of criticism by human rights organisations. And so, the executions go on. In fact, this year they are likely to increase rapidly.