The Anchorage Daily News carries the editorial today, "Death penalty? Alaska doesn't need it."
Nikiski state Rep. Mike Chenault served notice on his colleagues last week: Next session, he will push to reinstate the death penalty in Alaska.
If he does, it will be a distraction the next Legislature doesn't need. Legislators have only 90 days to do their work each session, so they don't have time for tough-on-crime posturing. Over the years, Alaska legislators have shrugged off similar calls to reinstate the death penalty, and for good reason.
The death penalty is state-sanctioned, premeditated revenge killing. It is the kind of barbaric "justice" practiced in countries like Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia and Zimbabwe.
Besides, to an offender sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, the burden of knowing you will live your entire life in prison can be a fate worse than death.
Like all human institutions, the justice system is imperfect. Sometimes innocent people are sentenced to die. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 128 inmates who were exonerated or didn't get fair trials have been freed from death row since 1973, when legal executions resumed in the U.S. With the death penalty, the chance of irreversible error is too high.
Back in 2003, during a local anti-death penalty event, Florence Ward offered Alaskans a healthy perspective on the subject. Her niece was one of four youths killed by Charles Meach in Russian Jack Springs Park in 1982. Ward said Meach fully deserved his 396-year prison sentence, but she didn't want to see him put to death.
"I just think there's so many inequities in it," Ward said. "I personally couldn't do it, and I'm not about to ask anyone to do it."
Earlier coverage is here.
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