Morris: America, it’s long past time to end the death penalty

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American state governments have been on a noticeable killing spree of late.

In the span of six days starting Sept. 20, South Carolina, Missouri, Texas, Alabama and Oklahoma each reduced their overall death row counts with an execution. Seven more people are scheduled to die at the hands of a state government before 2024 ends.

Death penalty convictions continue to remain an often arbitrary and imperfect science at best. Strong DNA-based evidence exists that innocent people have been put to death. There’s also the stubborn fact that the race and class of alleged perpetrators and victims matter.

Minnesota watches the barbaric spectacle from a distance, having banned the practice of capital punishment in 1911. Now, with Texas and Alabama having more executions on tap for October, here are three questions worth renewed examination:

• Why do American states continue to execute people even when reasonable questions are raised about their wrongful convictions?

• Why do the federal government and the U.S. military still have the death penalty on the books?

• Why hasn’t President Joe Biden worked more intentionally to keep his 2020 campaign pledge to advance legislation to eliminate federal executions?

More than 70% of the world’s nations have rejected the death penalty in either law or practice, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. According to the center, America remains an outlier on the world stage, joining nations like Iran, Saudi Arabia and China that routinely carry out executions.

Currently, 27 American states retain capital punishment laws. And while only a handful of those states pursue the penalty with enthusiasm — states that execute do so routinely. Missouri is one of those states.

On Tuesday, the state executed Marcellus Williams by lethal injection. He was killed over the objection of the prosecutor’s office that obtained his murder conviction. The surviving spouse of the murdered victim agreed with the prosecutor. Too much uncertainty about the fairness of the original trial lingered. The belated emergence of DNA evidence created enough doubt for the prosecution to create a plea deal with Williams, which would have reduced his death sentence to life in prison.

The deal didn’t fly. The Missouri Supreme Court refused to acknowledge the agreement, and Missouri Gov. Mike Parson declined a last-ditch appeal for clemency.

When Biden ran for president in 2020, he said he intended to abolish the federal death penalty. He said the decision was largely premised on the effort to counter the proven systemic unfairness of capital punishments, which disproportionately ensnares minorities and the poor. Biden said a federal abolition of the death penalty would further incentivize states to follow the lead of the federal government to end capital punishment.

While most Americans support capital punishment for those who commit crimes such as murder, support for the death penalty has dropped appreciably in recent years, according to the Pew Research Center. Most Americans also have concerns about the fairness of the penalty and whether it serves as a deterrent, according to Pew.

With his term quickly coming to an end, it is time for Biden to revive the conversation he placed on the agenda. He still has time to take executive action to abolish the penalty by pushing the Justice Department not to pursue death penalty cases and to commute current death sentences to life sentences.

It’s long past time for governments to get out of the business of executing people. It would be a fitting tribute to Biden’s legacy to end this irreversible form of punishment that stains the American experience.