From the 2005 Statement of Conscience: Criminal Justice and Prison Reform

Not all prisoners who enter the system leave. One of the most shameful aspects of our current criminal justice system is the death penalty. Many countries have abandoned the practice of capital punishment. Studies fail to demonstrate that the death penalty actually deters crime. While the United States Supreme Court has ruled against the execution of juvenile offenders, the death penalty is still legal in the United States. Experience shows that judges and juries wrongly convict defendants. Given the number of death row inmates released on account of innocence, it is highly likely that we have executed innocent people and will do so again in the future unless we abolish the death penalty.

Advocacy Goals

Legislation that strengthens gun control, ends the so-called “War on Drugs,” disallows mandatory minimum sentencing, provides for fair, equitable, anti-racist sentencing, and abolishes the death penalty.

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Unitarian Universalists for Social Justice (UUSJ) respectfully requests the suspension of all pending federal executions indefinitely and the commutation of the death sentences.

As Justice William J. Brennan put it, “the death penalty is imposed not only in a freakish and discriminatory manner but also in some cases upon defendants who are innocent.” The horrific legacy of lynching in the United States (U.S.) casts its evil shadow over the current application of the death penalty. In states that retain the death penalty, 98 percent of district attorneys are white and only 1 percent are black. Research has shown that, when the murder victim is white, the defendant is more than three times as likely to be sentenced to death compared to when the murder victim is black.

Further, execution is also irrevocable, and innocent people have likely been victims of it. The sanction of death, when it is not necessary to protect society, violates respect for human life and dignity. Its application is deeply flawed and can be irreversibly wrong, is prone to errors, and is biased by factors such as race, the quality of legal representation, and the location where the crime was committed. We have other ways to punish criminals and protect society. In 2012, the National Research Council of the National Academies concluded that there is no credible evidence that the death penalty deters homicide. In fact, states without the death penalty have consistently had lower murder rates than the death penalty states.

At a time in which the U.S. as a whole and individual states and counties have continued their long-term movement away from the death penalty, the federal government’s current execution spree has established it as an outlier jurisdiction out of step with the practices of the nation as a whole. The federal government has already carried out more executions in 2020 than in any other year since capital punishment resumed in the U.S. in the 1970s.

We need to forgive and love, both in fidelity to our principles and for our own well-being.

Unitarian Universalists have opposed the use of the Death Penalty since 1974, and UUSJ continues this tradition as well as its commitment to justice. UU principles include:

1. The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
2. Justice, equity, and compassion in human relations;
3. Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
4. A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
5. The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
6. The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
7. Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
8. We also oppose all forms of racial injustice.

UUSJ views the forthcoming executions as contrary to these principles. We therefore vociferously object to the executions as well as the policies, programs, and laws that make them possible. Federal officials of conscience must halt and suspend all federal death penalty executions.

Bob Denniston, Board Chair

Pablo DeJesus, Executive Director