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A new study released Friday has found the death penalty system in the United States to be in decline over the past decade. In the end of the year report compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center, death sentences handed down across the nation reportedly reached an all-time low since 1976 when the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated executions. In total, a hundred and six prisoners were condemned to death row in 2009. The DPIC report’s author, Richard Dieter, has stated that the statistics his organization charted for the year reflect a general downward trend over the course of the past decade. In terms of executions, only eleven of thirty-five states in the union who still have the death penalty at their disposal actually utilized it. The total number of executions this year totaled to one per week in the United States with the state of Texas accounting for nearly half of them. The number of times the death penalty was carried out was actually higher than last year’s figures although a four-month moratorium in 2008 factors in the statistical comparison. Despite its severe budget crisis, California bucked the national trend by condemning twenty-nine prisoners to death row; a fifty percent increase over the past few years.

GUEST: Mike Farrell, Actor and activist, President of the Board for Death Penalty Focus

For more information, visit www.deathpenalty.org and www.deathpenaltyinfo.org. Read the DPIC report at: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/2009YearEndReport.pdf

Rough Transcript:

SK: Thanks so much for joining us. So, it looks like it is somewhat a mixed picture but, overall, as I stated, it seems as though it is good news for advocates against the death penalty like yourself.

MF: Well, yes, I think it’s very clear that the people are beginning to move away from the death system. Over the years the toll has been taken on people’s conscience, I think, by the fact that we have so many people. Primarily the statistic that seems to bother most people is the fact that there have been so many innocent found to be on death row and, ultimately, exonerated and released. The question then becomes how many innocent people have we in fact convicted and executed, which is a statistic that we can only speculate about. There are indications of a number of cases that it appears that the person was innocent and executed but we continue to have this phenomenon of institutional imperative to deny having made a mistake that has been reflected in a number of decisions and particularly the statements of people like Justice Scalia on the Supreme Court who continues to insist that no innocent person has ever been executed.

SK: So even though there have been many exonerations shown, many people exonerated for example, in 2009, I understand nine people were exonerated even though things like DNA evidence provides rock-solid proof whether a person was involved in killing somebody else or not. You’re saying that there’s just this sort of institutional inertia to admit that there have been mistakes but what about at the more local level – judges, etc. – rather than the Supreme Court? Is there a reluctance to rely on the death penalty because of that potential to kill an innocent person?

MF: That’s not so much a phenomenon with judges but of juries. Juries are beginning to reflect, I think, this growing awareness that I’ve described. And the awareness comes from a number of different things. There’s been sort of an attrition over a number of years as people begin to kind of take a look at this system and recognize the flaws in it. The most dramatic one, it seems to me, is the one I reflected, just to mention the business of the innocent people being captured. Economics is beginning to take a considerable hold of people’s attention as well. But, yes, I think, for example, in Texas, which is the most egregious violator of this whole notion of human rights in my view, for many years the Texas prosecutorial forces really refused to support and, through their refusal, disallowed the possibility of converting their system to one wherein life in prison without the possibility of parole was an option for juries. That being the case, the prosecutors could continue to argue in death cases, or what they wanted to make death cases, that if they didn’t kill this individual that they were convinced was responsible for the crime he or she would get out of prison eventually because there was no life without parole option. In 2005, Texas finally instituted in law the option of life in prison without possibility of parole and we’re seeing, even there now, juries are more inclined to use that option – to put somebody in prison for the rest of his or her natural life – than to kill that person because of this, I think, growing concern that maybe we don’t know all the facts.

SK: Mike Farrell, let’s talk about the issue of cost, the cost of the death penalty. New Mexico recently abolished the death penalty and the Governor Bill Richardson cited the cost of maintaining this death penalty system as one reason for abolishing it. At a time when so many states are struggling so deeply and having to lay off teachers and having to lay off other public employees, the death penalty system, which costs a lot of money, does come under scrutiny. Do you think that that is one reason also why we’re seeing these downward trends in the use of the death penalty and could it also herald more states abolishing the death penalty simply because of the economics of it in the coming months and years?

MF: I think yes, the short answer is yes. For those of us who’ve been arguing against the death penalty – I’ve been speaking and debating it for decades – I was frankly reluctant over the years to make the case because, first of all, it’s counterintuitive.

SK: Sure.

MF: People want to believe that it’s far cheaper to simply kill somebody than it is to maintain him or her in prison for the rest of his or her natural life. It’s a tough argument to make, one. And two, morally, it felt sort of funny to me to talk about dollars and cents when we’re talking about a person’s life. But, the fact remains, that it is far more expensive to go through the process and execute somebody than it is to go through the much simpler process of a non-capital trial and put somebody in prison for the rest of his or her life with no possibility of release and maintain that person in prison for all those years. It’s far cheaper to do that. Only in recent years is it becoming known and/or considered to the degree that it is now very much on the minds of people like Gov. Richardson and people like the governor and legislature in New Jersey that, three years ago, eliminated the use of the death penalty for the same reason. And, it is now actually, under consideration in a number of states that are taking another look at the death system because of what you just suggested, because of the economic hard times we find ourselves in. A great example is here in California. We had the commission, the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, take a two-and-a-half year look at our criminal justice system in general and our death penalty in particular and found that we are wasting $135 million a year simply to maintain a death system that we haven’t used in three years because it’s been under court order to be halted. And if, they said – the commission said and the commission was headed by a former attorney general – the commission said that if we were to do the system properly and if we were to do the system fairly, it would cost us another $95 million a year, on top of the $135 million that it today wastes. So, while they didn’t make a recommendation one way or the other because it wasn’t part of their mandate, it was very clear that the commissioners felt that given the economic problems of the state, there would be only one proper resolution to this and it would be to eliminate the death system.

SK: And yet, why is California actually still putting more prisoners onto death row? Even if there’s, at this point, a moratorium of sorts on executing them and what you’ve said in terms of their report is very optimistic for advocates against the death penalty, California condemned 29 prisoners to death row which is a 50% increase over the past few years. What’s going on here?

MF: Well, because we have a moratorium imposed by Federal Judge Jeremy Fogel and a secondary moratorium imposed by another State Judge because of a process problem and that has kept all executions from being carried forward but they are still on the books and as a result of the fact that they are still on the books, you still have prosecutors who will go for the death penalty in cases that they feel either deserves it or they feel – my own concern about prosecutors is quite often that they believe that they enhance their own careers by getting successful death penalty prosecutions. So, because it’s on the books they can still put people on death row and our death row continues to expand. We have the largest death row in the country – almost 700 people on our death row now which, if you do the math, shows that we would have to kill one person a day for over two years in order to empty the death row while at the same time we have maybe 25 people a year going back to refill it so it’s a problem that has almost no solution except for the obvious one of eliminating the use of the death penalty.

SK: Which would also save a lot of money in this very, very cash-strapped state. My guest is actor and activist Mike Farrell. He’s the President of the Board for Death Penalty Focus. We’re talking about the new report by the organization DPIC, Death Penalty Information Center, showing that death sentences in the U.S. are the lowest since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. I also understand there was a recent poll of police chiefs across the country earlier this year showing that they didn’t really prioritize the death penalty very highly in terms of acting as a deterrent and also they rated it as one of the most inefficient uses of taxpayer money in fighting crime. So, it seems as though law enforcement can be a better partner these days for death penalty activists like yourself.

MF: Yes, Death Penalty Focus, the organization I chair which is based here in California has focused in the last few years on reaching out to law enforcement individuals and we have a growing number of people from prosecutors to police officers and police executives who are speaking out now in opposition to the death penalty for those reasons. Not because they are soft on crime, which is a sort of bludgeon that people use to keep people from speaking out, particularly people in the political world, to keep them from speaking out against the death penalty. But they say it’s inefficient, it’s inappropriate, it’s too expensive, it really doesn’t serve their purposes. And, for some years now, we’ve known that the majority of police chiefs in the country were not very keen on the use of the death penalty because, just priority-wise, it really doesn’t enhance or serve their work. And that was, I think, dramatically demonstrated in New Jersey which, as we said earlier, eliminated the use of the death penalty three years ago. One of the people on the panel that examined their death penalty was a police chief of West Orange, New Jersey. And when he saw the results of this study, he said, and I’m not quoting him, but he said this is effectively absurd. He said if you give me the quarter of a million dollars that you wasted on this use of a death penalty that isn’t serving us to do better police work I can see to it that there aren’t the kinds of crimes that result in a death penalty sentence. So, I think police are beginning to better understand the nature, the political nature if you will, of the death system and, as a result, they’re coming out more strongly against it.

SK: Finally, Mike Farrell, what can be expected at the national and the state level here in California on the death penalty? Just from you having followed this issue now for so long and being an active part of the anti-death penalty activism in the country, do you see a federal level, any kind of legislation at the federal level taking a look at the death penalty or are we going to see state by state abolition of the death penalty or will it be something else?

MF: Well, we have seen legislation proposed in the United States Congress and Senate over the years but it’s generally a kind of statement rather than a really hopeful possibility. I think it’s unlikely that we’ll see federal legislation that will end the use of the death penalty. I think it’s going to happen on a state-by-state basis. We’re seeing that happen now – as you’ve said earlier, 15 states do not use the death penalty. For the first time in the modern era, two states, New Jersey and New Mexico have given it up in the last few years, New Jersey this year. Montana actually came within one vote of eliminating it this year. The New Hampshire legislature actually voted to eliminate it and it was vetoed by their governor. Maryland will probably be the next state to eliminate the use of the death penalty. So, I think it will be done on a state-by-state basis until, as happened, with the execution of minors it becomes clear that a majority of the people in the country and a majority of the states in the country either do not use or will not use and do not support the use of the death penalty to the point that the U.S. Supreme Court may ultimately have to act.

SK: Well, Mike Farrell, thank you so much for joining us today.

MF: It’s been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you.

SK: I’ve been speaking with actor and activist Mike Farrell. He’s the President of the Board for Death Penalty Focus. You may know him for his portrayal of Army Captain B.J. Hunnicutt in the t.v. series M.A.S.H. He also plays Dr. Jim Hansen in the weekly NBC series Providence. And you can find out more about his organization Death Penalty Focus at deathpenalty.org We’ve been talking about the recent study by Death Penalty Information Center which is a national organization and their website is deathpenaltyinfo.org We will link to both of these sites as well as the study that we’ve been discussing at our site later today kpfk.org/uprising and, by the way, if you’ve signed up for our mailing list, all of the information from every day’s shows will arrive in your mailbox.

Special thanks to Julie Svendsen for transcribing this interview.