Mario Cuomo: the death penalty is a "stain on our conscience"

[Nye Bevan]

I have studied the death penalty for more than half my lifetime. I have debated it hundreds of times. I have heard all the arguments, analyzed all the evidence I could find, measured public opinion when it was opposed to the practice, when it was indifferent, and when it was passionately in favor. Always I have concluded the death penalty is wrong because it lowers us all; it is a surrender to the worst that is in us; it uses a power - the official power to kill by execution - that has never elevated a society, never brought back a life, never inspired anything but hate.

And it has killed many innocent people.

This is a serious moral problem for every U.S. governor who presides over executions - whether in Georgia, Texas or even, theoretically, New York. All states should do as the bold few have done and officially outlaw this form of punishment.

For 12 years as governor, I prevented the death penalty from becoming law in New York by my vetoes. But for all that time, there was a disconcertingly strong preference for the death penalty in the general public.

New York returned to the death penalty shortly after I was defeated by a Republican candidate; the state's highest court has effectively prevented the law from being applied - but New York continues to have the law on its books with no signs of a movement to remove it.

That law is a stain on our conscience. The 46 executions in the United States in 2008 were, I believe, an abomination.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/op-ed-mario-cuomo-calls-capital-punishment-corrosive-society

I wish more Democrats would be as principled.

[bananas]

1. k&r nt