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Opinion

America should honor MLK’s vision by halting the death penalty

Jan. 17 also marks a tragic anniversary of the use of the death penalty in the U.S.

On Monday the nation will pause, perhaps too briefly, to remember and pay tribute to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., arguably the leading U.S. (and global) civil and human rights activist who was the voice of reason and conscience during the onset and growth of the modern civil rights struggle in this country between 1955 and 1968.

As America reflects on King’s life, oratory and inspirational vision of what this country could, should and is still struggling to become, I would urge us all to remember another anniversary commemorated on the same day. On Jan. 17, 1977, Gary Gilmore, a convicted felon on death row in Utah, was executed by a Utah firing squad and thus became the first condemned inmate to be put to death in this country in 10 years — a mere six months after the U.S. Supreme Court, on July 2, 1976, upheld the legality of the death penalty in the case of Gregg vs. Georgia.

Gilmore’s execution was significant because it ended a de facto nationwide moratorium on the death penalty that had been in place for almost a decade. He was the only inmate executed in America in 1977 or 1978.

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The increase in national executions was initially slow: two in 1979, zero in 1980, one in 1981, two in 1982, and five in 1983. The nation carried out 21 executions in 1984, and has been in double digits every year since, including 11 last year.

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To date, beginning with Gilmore’s execution, there have been 1,540 executions, and eight more are scheduled before the end of June 2022; many new and serious execution dates are expected to be set in the weeks and months ahead.

The struggle for civil rights forced America to come to grips with its brutally racist past and unfair treatment of people of color, especially, but not exclusively, in the South. King repeatedly spoke in soaring rhetoric, urging and demanding America to fulfill its promise of human dignity and human rights for all people, regardless of their skin color.

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Not surprisingly, there was great resistance in this country to move away from segregationist and racist policies and laws. The era 1955-1968 was marked by violent upheaval, political assassinations, including those of Harry T. Moore, Medgar Evers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and, ultimately, King himself. Bombings and Ku Klux Klan violence claimed the lives of three African American girls in a church in Birmingham and the life of Viola Liuzzo on the highway between Montgomery and Selma, Ala.

The struggle to end the death penalty, the longest-running institution in this country, is no less a civil and human rights issue meriting our individual and national attention. Even with a pro-death penalty U.S. Supreme Court, the ability to use the death penalty has narrowed, as the country has ended executions for juvenile offenders and people with intellectual disability.

The factual arguments about the death penalty should give all of us serious pause to ask what is still occurring in our names with our tax dollars, in a criminal justice system plagued by systemic and ongoing racism, mistakes (over 180 people who were wrongly convicted have mercifully been freed from death row facilities across the country), and botched executions involving flaming electrocutions, gruesome lethal injections gone awry, and hangings, gassings and firing squads.

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Who are we as a people? Is the death penalty the best response that this country, in 2022, can offer to some convicted people, including those who may have been wrongly convicted? If the answer to this question is “yes,” I’d argue that it is a profound and sad commentary on the unwillingness and inability of our bipartisan leadership to help move this country to fulfill the hopes of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the defense of human rights and human dignity.

If the answer to the above query is “no,” that the death penalty does not represent the best this country can offer, the logical follow-up question is: “Then why are we still using it?”

One year ago, King’s son, Martin Luther King III, wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post, stating: “In 1957, my father, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was asked whether God approves of the death penalty for certain crimes. He responded, ‘I do not think that God approves the death penalty for any crimes.’ He explained that ‘capital punishment is against the better judgment of modern criminology, and, above all, against the highest expression of love in the nature of God.’ ”

“My father also recognized the “severity and inequality” of the death penalty … nothing could dishonor his legacy more profoundly than if … executions go forward.”

There is, in the final analysis, an inextricable link between Gilmore and King.

People may not want to reflect on the life and crimes of Gilmore, but his execution, and all those that have followed, are an outrage and a stain on this country. We would do well to remember that human rights and human dignity inherently belong to all people at all times, regardless of who they are or what they may have done.

It would be a fitting tribute to King’s vision for this country to abolish the death penalty and to uphold the essential truth of human rights, namely, that there is no such thing as a lesser person.

Rick Halperin is the director of the Human Rights Program at Southern Methodist University. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.

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