End The Death Penalty

Black people, including Black disabled, LGBTQ and low- and no-income people, are disproportionately sentenced to death in the U.S.

The Issue:

Black people, including Black disabled, LGBTQ and low- and no-income people, are disproportionately sentenced to death in the U.S.

The Demand:

Abolish the death penalty, life without the possibility of parole (LWOP), and death by incarceration..

Key Federal Legislation:

People’s Justice Guarantee
For a list of pending state legislation on the death penalty, please visit the Death Penalty Information Center.

WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?

The death penalty is morally repugnant, and represents a form of “legal lynching,” which has targeted Blacks and other people of color, disabled people, LGBTQ people, and low and no-income people throughout its history in the United States.

Although Black people make up 13% of the population in the U.S., 34% of people executed by the state since 1976 have been Black.

As of July 2019, 41.5% of people on death row are Black. Statistically, people convicted of killing white people are at least three to four times more likely to be sentenced to death than people who kill anyone else.

Black people accused of killing white people are more likely to be sentenced to death than white people accused of killing Black people.

The death penalty is still authorized in 29 states, for certain federal offenses, and by the U.S. military. Twenty-one (21) states no longer allow the death penalty. Seven states—Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, and Washington—have repealed the death penalty in the past 15 years. New death sentences and execution rates are decreasing every year. For the first time, public support of the death penalty is now lower than support for a life sentence.

The death penalty is randomly and arbitrarily sought by prosecutors, upwards of 95% of whom are white, who have the sole discretion to seek or not seek death.

Official misconduct is more common in death penalty cases, especially if the defendant is Black. Data shows that 87% of Black exonerees who were sentenced to death were victims of official misconduct, compared to 67% of white death row exonerees.

To date, more than 165 people and counting have been declared innocent of the crime for which they were sentenced to death, and a number of innocent people have been executed.

The chance of receiving the death penalty is often a product of geography: about 1% of U.S. counties produce more than half of all death sentences. It is also often a product of poverty—defending against the death penalty requires a high level of representation and resources not available to most defendants.

THE DEMAND

The death penalty is and always has been a tool used to enforce racism, ableism, and gender and sexual conformity. We do not believe the death penalty was designed to be fair, nor do we believe that it can be fairly applied. It cannot be reformed to eliminate the inherent bias in its administration. We must relegate this barbaric practice to the annals of history where it belongs.

Our policy goal is simply to abolish the death penalty. Repeal is often prospective, meaning there will be no new capital prosecutions. Abolition is comprehensive—it is both prospective and retroactive, and will result in the removal of all prisoners from death row.

HOW DOES THIS SOLUTION ADDRESS THE SPECIFIC NEEDS OF SOME OF THE MOST MARGINALIZED BLACK PEOPLE?

Black people are disproportionately targeted for the death penalty, including Black people with mental, cognitive, intellectual, developmental, and physical disabilities, severe trauma histories, and/or prior criminal records, often directly related to systemic racial bias and poverty. Undocumented and LGBTQ people are also disproportionately targeted for the death penalty. Most women on death row have been convicted of an offense related to the death of an abusive partner, and many have been gender nonconforming..

ACTIONS

Federal Action

Pass the People’s Justice Guarantee and associated legislation eliminating the death penalty for all federal crimes.
Repeal the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (VCCLEA or ‘94 Crime Bill) provisions adding more than 60 death penalty eligible offenses.
Repeal the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), which limits procedural and substantive relief for people sentenced to death.

Economic Violence

Enforce the National Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights.
Pass the Paycheck Fairness Act to address the gender-based wage gap.
Pass the Schedules that Work Act, which offers critical protections to hourly and shift workers.
Pass the Universal Childcare and Early Learning Act.
Pass the Family and Medical Insurance Leave (FAMILY) Act, which would create a national family and medical leave insurance program.
Pass the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which would ensure that workers with limitations related to pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions are not forced out of their jobs or denied reasonable workplace accommodations.
Pass the Raise the Wage Act, which would increase the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour.
Pass the Healthy Families Act, which would set a national paid sick days standard. This legislation would also allow workers who are survivors of domestic violence, stalking, or sexual assault to use their paid sick days to seek assistance related to the abuse.
Pass legislation eliminating time, family size, and immigration based restrictions and work requirements for social benefits, including welfare, food stamps, and other entitlements, significantly increasing benefits, and raising the qualification maximum for entitlement to public assistance.

Reproductive & Maternal Justice

Repeal the Hyde amendment, which prohibits use of federal funds to provide abortion care to Medicaid and CHIP recipients, Indian Health Services recipients, women in the military and Peace Corps, women living in the District of Columbia and other federally controlled jurisdictions, and people incarcerated in federal facilities.
Repeal the Helms Amendment, which prohibits use of U.S. foreign aid to fund abortion as a method of family planning and replace it with endorsement of using U.S. funding for safe abortion services worldwide.
Pass the Black Maternal Momnibus Act of 2020.
Pass the Each Woman’s Act, which would repeal the Hyde Amendment, require federal health insurance programs, including Medicaid, Medicare, and CHIP, to provide coverage for abortion services; restore coverage for low-income women in the District of Columbia; ensure coverage of abortion care for federal employees; ensure that women who receive health care services via the Indian Health Service, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, or the Veterans Health Administration have access to abortion care; and prohibit state or local governments from restricting coverage of abortion by private health insurance plans.
Pass the Women’s Health Protection Act, a federal law that would protect abortion access and prevent state abortion bans and medically unnecessary restrictions by establishing a statutory right for a provider to provide abortion services, and a corresponding right for their patients to obtain abortion services, free from bans and restrictions that single out abortion and impede access to care.
Restore and expand protections against discrimination for transgender people in the Affordable Care Act

Pass the Maternal Care Access and Reducing Emergencies (CARE) Act, aimed at reducing racial disparities in maternal care and mortality.
Pass the Maximizing Outcomes for Moms through Medicaid Improvement and Enhancement of Services (MOMMIES) Act, which would enhance Medicaid coverage for people postpartum.
Pass the Mothers Offspring Mortality and Morbidity Awareness (MOMMA’s) Act, which would establish best practices for the prevention of maternal mortality.
Pass the Access to Birth Control Act, which would ensure that people are able to access birth control in a timely manner by prohibiting pharmacies from refusing to fill a customer’s valid prescription for birth control.
Pass the Access to Infertility Treatment and Care Act, which would require private health plans that cover obstetrical services to also cover infertility treatments, including in vitro fertilization.
Pass the Affordability is Access Act, which would require health insurance plans to cover over-the-counter oral contraceptives without cost-sharing, if and when the Food and Drug Administration approves an over-the-counter application.
The Department of Health and Human Services must develop a robust research and outreach initiative on U.S. maternal mortality in the form of an interagency task force.

Foster Care & Child Welfare

Repeal the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA).
Repeal the Child Abuse Prevention Treatment Act (CAPTA) provision, which mandates that hospitals notify CPS agents of certain cases of children exposed to controlled substances in utero. Women with private health insurance are almost never drug tested and, therefore, never reported.
Decrease and end the open-ended entitlement funding the foster system, and reinvest that money into community-based organizations that can provide services to families in need.
Create meaningful legal protections for parents facing termination of parental rights, including the right to effective assistance of counsel, the right to a jury trial, and the right to require the state to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it is in the best interests of a child to proceed with termination, a right to equivalent supports to those offered foster families and kinship care, and a right to remain on a child’s birth certificate.
Create a child welfare Miranda right to remain silent and a right to counsel.
End the ability of CPS agents to create a public record of a family as abusive or neglectful where there has been no court filing or process.
Eliminate the drug testing of pregnant people and their newborns unless hospitals obtain informed consent. Even where informed consent is obtained, eliminate reports of substance use to child protective services when the only concern is substance use.
Clarify child protection laws to ensure that the power related to state regulation of parenting is over children, not fetuses and pregnant people.

State ACTION

Pass legislation abolishing or imposing a moratorium on the death penalty, and provide new trials to individuals currently on death row.
In some states, based on declining popular support, it is possible to abolish the death penalty through strategic legislative advocacy by coordinated coalitions accompanied by public education.
In some states, the courts are well-positioned to declare the death penalty unconstitutional for a range of reasons.

Find out more about the death penalty and people in your state who are fighting to abolish it from the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

Find a list of currently pending legislation at the Death Penalty Information Center.

LOCAL ACTION

Engage in participatory defense campaigns through community education and advocacy on behalf of people charged with capital offenses and facing a death sentence, in coordination with their counsel.
Put pressure on policymakers and the public to follow national trends away from seeking and imposing the death penalty.
Target local prosecutorial races and advocate for prosecutors to commit to not seeking the death penalty in individual cases and as a matter of policy.

Model Legislation

Most state anti-death penalty coalitions have developed model repeal and abolition bills that are applicable to their state. For more information, visit the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.