The death penalty is entirely racist in its application in the United States today. A disproportionate number of blacks and minorities are put to death. As shown in the figure below, a considerably higher proportion of blacks end up on death row compared to whites, even though whites make up a distinctive majority of the population. A large part of this is because many blacks still live in poverty in the US due to historic exploitation and oppression by the white majority, and poverty causes crime. But this doesn't explain all of the phenomenon; the justice system is definitively prejudicial in its treatment of blacks, especially when the police, prosecutors, and judges are primarily white males who tend to look upon blacks as criminals and are disinclined to treat them fairly.
In Illinois, it was recently found that 17 death row inmates, 13 of whom were black, were entirely innocent of the charges that had been brought against them. In a death row population of 167, this means that at least 8.7% of the inmates were innocent. The chart below illustrates this shocking fact. Obviously, with Illinois considered far from being the least just state in the country, innocent men and women are awaiting execution on death row all across the United States. Some 3700 men and women sit on death row, of which at least 8%, or about 300 are probably innocent of the crimes they have been charged with. Of these, approximately 175 are blacks who have probably been falsely convicted of capital crimes. One wonders how many innocent people have been murdered by the State since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977, and how many innocent people are incarcerated in prison for non-capital crimes.
Ironic as it may seem, the first man on Earth to ban the death penalty was himself black. The Pharoah Shabaka (635-585 BCE), founder of the XXV Dynasty, was an Ethiopian who liberated and ruled Egypt for 50 years, during which he banned the death penalty. The death penalty remained virtually unimposed in Egypt for longer than the United States has existed as a nation. Upon their deaths the Egyptians would be judged according to how well they abided by The Principles of Maat, the first of which stated "I have not killed, nor bid anyone to kill."
What is most appalling about the death penalty in the US is not that it is totally ineffective in preventing crime, or that it costs more to execute a human being than to incarcerate him, but that most Americans claim to be Christians, but simultaneously support the death penalty. Jesus, who was a dark-skinned, curly-haired Palestinian Jew, and would have been viewed as a black man by white Americans, was himself an innocent victim of the death penalty.
Neither Jesus nor any devout Jews believed in the death penalty; it was considered to be strictly against the Commandments. The Jews had no civil death penalty. Jesus also stated in no uncertain terms, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." We could paraphrase Jesus without loss of intent if we said "Let those who are without sin support the death penalty."
We at SAYAR condemn the death penalty as God-defying, cold-blooded murder and call upon all with any sense of morality or conscience to speak out against it, to oppose it, and to end it now and for all time.
