US Is on Its Own Path in the Death Penalty Debate

• Pages: 66-67

PHOTOGRAPHY BY THE CANADIAN PRESS IMAGES/MICHAEL DESJARDINS

66 || ABA JOURNAL APRIL 2018

Your ABA || MIDY EAR MEETING REPORT

When it comes to imposing

the death penalty, the

United States has long

outpaced North American neighbors

Canada and Mexico, according to

Cassandra Stubbs,

director of the

American Civil

Liberties Union’s

Capital Punishment

Project.

Stubbs, speaking

at the ABA Midyear

Meeting, told the

audience of “A

North American

Perspective on the

Death Penalty: The

American, Mexican

and Canadian

Experiences” that

although the death

penalty was legal in

Mexico and Canada

during the early to mid-20th century,

neither country actually carried out

many death sentences.

Between 1908 and 1961, only 11

people were executed in Mexico,

and the last civilian execution took

place in 1937. Although the penalty

remained on the books until 2005, no

one was executed after 1961. Canada

conducted its final execution in 1962

and fully abolished the death penalty

in 1998.

In contrast, Stubbs said, executions

in the United States increased in

the 20th century, despite a 10-year

period from 1967 to 1977 when no

executions took place. In 1972, the

U.S. Supreme Court suspended cap-

ital punishment with Furman v.

Georgia, but the justices’ 1976 deci-

sion in Gregg v. Georgia allowed for

its resumption. The greatest number

of executions took place in the 1930s

and 1940s with another, smaller

spike in the 1990s, Stubbs said.

But executions have been steadily

declining: In 1997, 74 people were

executed; in 2017, 23.

In the CLE session, sponsored by

the Criminal Justice Section, Stubbs

walked the audience through the

current state of the death penalty

in the United States, how racial

discrimination aects who is sen-

tenced to death, and how the dimin-

ished use of the death penalty could

form the basis for a future Supreme

Court decision abolishing it entirely.

“We have seen a major shift in

terms of international and national

opinions about the death penalty as

people have begun to realize that we

exonerate an enormous number of

people on death row,” Stubbs said.

“We are getting it wrong. We are sen-

tencing people to death, when they

are innocent, at a very high rate.”

OPPOSING VIEWS

Robert L. Weinberg, a past pres-

ident of the District of Columbia

Bar and the Bar Association of the

District of Columbia, brought up

Resolution 111, which the House

of Delegates later approved.

The resolution urges all death

penalty jurisdictions to prohibit

the execution of oenders who were

21 or younger when their crimes

were committed but “without

taking a position supporting or

US Is on Its Own Path in

the Death Penalty Debate

persecution in your country of origin.”

Acceptance via humanitarian and compas-

sionate grounds is also a possibility, Pelenur

said. “But it ’s not a clear fix for the hundreds

of thousands of DACA people,” he added.

“In my opinion , one of their best hopes is

a special measure from th e government,”

Pelenur said, addin g that a member of

Parliament has “already gone on camera

to say: ‘We actually like the DACA demo -

graphic, and we sho uld enact through the

will of Parliament a special category specifi-

cally for DACA.’ That actua lly is potentially

the best hope for the DACA people .”

Panelist Margaret Stock o f Cascadia

Cross Border Law Group in Anchorage,

Alaska, applauded the Canadians “for think-

ing about how to swipe ou r U.S.-educ ated

workforce and put the m to work for Canada.

It makes perfect se nse.”

Stock is a retired lieutenan t colonel for the

Military Police Corps in the Army Reserve.

She won a “genius grant ” fellowship in

2013 from the John D. and C atherine T.

MacArthur Foundation for her work as an

immigration attorney in shaping policies

at the Pentagon and the Dep artment of

Homeland Security.

Resolution 108E , passed by the House,

urges Congress to enact federal legislation

to help DACA recipients and other “un -

documented immigrants who entered

the United States as chil dren and who

meet age, residency, educational and

other qualifications ... apply for permanent

legal status and citizenship.”

A second element of the resolution urges

the DHS, in the abs ence of legislative act ion

by Congress, to “exercise its discretion

consistent with the legal authority conferred

upon it and refrain from ap prehending,

detaining or removing Dreamers.”

—L.R.

David Ware and Margaret Stock

Cassandra Stubbs

of the ACLU’s Capital

Punishment Project