A new report out of Tennessee documents the state of the death penalty system in the Volunteer State, and it doesn’t paint a pretty picture.
Tennessee, which just this month executed its first person in nearly a decade, has a track record fraught with mistakes including three exonerations and a staggering rate of death sentences reversed or vacated by the courts due to issues such as ineffective assistance of counsel, prosecutorial misconduct, and innocence. In fact, of the 192 individuals that the state has sentenced to death since 1977, over half (106) have seen their sentences or convictions vacated.
In addition to the glaring innocence issues within the death penalty, the report provides ample evidence that the state’s system is also overrun with issues of arbitrariness. These same problems are what led to the death penalty being banned in the late 1970’s.
In the landmark Supreme Court case, Furman vs. Georgia, the court struck down the constitutionality of the nation’s death penalty system based on evidence that it was applied to “a capriciously selected random handful,” who ended up on death row due to factors such as geography and race, and less because of the nature of their crime. In his opinion for the case, Justice Potter Stewart wrote, “These death sentences are cruel and unusual in the same way that being stuck by lightening is cruel and unusual.”
Unfortunately, not much has changed in Tennessee since that time. The report found that since 1977, one county in Tennessee (Shelby County) has accounted for 37% of all sustained death sentences, in the past 10 years, that number rises to 57%, and in the past 5 years it has been responsible for 100% of cases. A death penalty system based on geography is not a constitutional system.
Additionally, the report found that 23% of those sentenced to death received ineffective counsel, and that there were racial disparities in sentencing. While African Americans make-up only 17% of Tennessee’s population, they represent 44% of the state’s death row population. Again, justice allocated on factors such as wealth and race is not a constitutional system.
With problems as grave as these, there’s no question that the state has acted recklessly in reviving its executions. This report offers an opportunity for Tennesseans to confront the many problems with its death penalty and choose another path.
