Alabama is hoping to ramp up executions in 2009 after 2008 proved a slow year nationally for capital punishment

THE ISSUE: A surge in executions is expected in 2009, and Alabama is certainly positioned to do its part.

Executions across America have fallen off in recent years, and with good reason.

Scientific advances have made it clear the jury system, though grand in many ways, is not perfect. Sometimes, we now know, juries flat get it wrong. The thought of human error in most cases is bad enough; it's terrifying in the life-or-death decisions made in capital cases. Moreover, it has become increasingly hard to ignore the role that race, money and other arbitrary factors play in determining who gets sentenced to die.

So it's not surprising to learn the number of executions is down and, in 2008, hit a 14-year low. What should be surprising is that those who closely follow capital punishment expect 2009 to be a busy one for death chambers in the United States.

And it will be, if Alabama's plans are any indication. Alabama did not carry out a single execution this year (although not for a lack of trying). Yet it already has scheduled five executions from January just through May. The state hasn't executed that many people in an entire year since resuming capital punishment in 1983. (In the most active years since then - 1989, 2000 and 2005 - Alabama executed four people.)

Is Alabama planning so many executions next year because it has worked out all the troubling kinks with the death penalty? Sadly, no.

The only problem resolved in 2008 with regard to capital punishment was a legal challenge at the U.S. Supreme Court about the method of lethal injection used by the state of Kentucky (and virtually all other states with a death penalty). A nationwide pause on executions came to an end when the court ruled in that case. But it's not as if Alabama wisely used the timeout to re-examine its capital punishment practices.

Nothing has been done statewide to ensure those accused of the most serious crimes are represented by a competent lawyer with the resources to provide an adequate defense, much less a vigorous one. Nothing has been done to make sure the death penalty is applied to those who commit the worst crimes; currently, simply shooting and killing a person inside a car or from a car is a death penalty offense, while shooting and killing the same person on the sidewalk is not.

Nothing has been done to make sure the death penalty is applied without regard to race, either of the defendant or the victim. Nothing has been done to ensure modern scientific testing is available for Death Row inmates convicted before the age of DNA exonerations.

In short, nothing has been done to ensure the death penalty is applied fairly and accurately in Alabama.

As it stands, the state of Alabama should not be in a hurry to execute anyone. If anything, it should be going the other direction. It should put executions on hold and find ways to make sure our death penalty system is more a system of justice than injustice.

A clear majority of Americans still support the death penalty, though there's evidence that public enthusiasm for it is softening. But even if every American embraced the death penalty, it still would be incumbent on us as a society to inflict this grave punishment with a sense of humility and an abundance of caution.

This newspaper opposes capital punishment. We believe the alternative - life in prison without parole - punishes the offender and protects the public without requiring us to sacrifice our pro-life values. But if our state government persists in taking life, it must at the very least improve the odds of getting it right.

Source: Editorial, Birmingham News, January 1, 2009

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