From Alabama

"It's hard to argue with a state senator's logic for why Alabama should abolish the death penalty," is the title of an editorial in today's Birmingham News.

If executing people really serves as a deterrent to murder, why isn't Alabama sending fewer people to Death Row?

It's a question state Sen. Hank Sanders raised in a speech Sunday, and it's one that his colleagues in the Alabama Legislature should seriously consider. Then, maybe they'll consider Sanders' legislation to abolish the death penalty altogether.

So many arguments can be made for why the state of Alabama should stop this insanity. There's nothing fair about the way the state determines who will die. What makes a murder subject to capital punishment can be something so arbitrary as whether the victim was inside or outside at the time. And whether a death sentence will actually be inflicted depends on a hodgepodge of factors far more arbitrary than the legal criteria. What color was the skin of the victims? How diligent was the defense lawyer? Did the local district attorney even seek the death penalty? Did the judge opt for a death sentence even if a jury recommended against it?

And:

Locking up a killer for life is the alternative to death in capital cases. That is enough to keep Alabamians safe, and a series of studies shows it is cheaper than pursuing an execution to the end.

The state should put the death penalty to death. It isn't fair, necessary or cost-effective, and if the purpose of it is to stop murder, it isn't working.

"Selma senator wants to abolish death penalty," by William White is from the Opelika-Auburn News.

A state senator from Selma says he plans to introduce a bill to abolish the death penalty in Alabama during the upcoming regular session of the Legislature.

 “I call it murder when the state of Alabama makes the deliberate decision to kill a person,” said Sen. Henry “Hank” Sanders,D-Selma.

Sanders spoke to the congregation and guests Sunday at the Auburn Unitarian Universalist Fellowship for the first in a series of meetings for “The Journey of Hope – from Violence to Healing,” which highlights concerns about the death penalty in Alabama.

While Sanders had introduced legislation for a moratorium on executions previously, he said he plans to take the next step in the upcoming session that begins Feb. 7.

“I will introduce a bill to abolish the death penalty,” said Sanders to the applause of the audience at the church.

Also from Alabama, there is news of a new book.  "Lawyer Richard Jaffe questions the death penalty in 'Quest for Justice: Defending the Damned'," by Kent Faulk is from the Birmingham News.

In his more than three decades as a lawyer, Richard Jaffe has defended hundreds of people charged with ending the lives of others -- including more than 60 charged with capital murder.

Some were acquitted. Others were not. But Jaffe believes not one of his clients, or those of any other lawyer, should ever have to face the ultimate penalty for their crimes -- death.

Through a retelling of some of the high-profile and more routine cases he has handled in his new book -- "Quest for Justice: Defending the Damned" -- Jaffe poses what he says are troubling questions about the use of the death penalty in Alabama and elsewhere.

And:

Three of the 138 people exonerated and released from Death Rows in the United States -- Bo Cochran, Gary Drinkard, and Randal Padgett -- were clients Jaffe took on after initial convictions and death sentences. He helped another Death Row inmate win a new trial at which he was acquitted.

"The death penalty doesn't work; therefore, no one should be subjected to it, for all the reasons I lay out in the book," Jaffe said.

Birmingham's CBS affiliate, WIAT-TV, also profiled the book, "Death Penalty: Quest for Justice."  There is video at the link.

Defense Attorney Richard Jaffe doesn't believe he will change minds about the death penalty with his new book out in February, Quest for Justice: Defending the Damned. But he does hope the public will at least begin to ask more questions.

Among those questions the cost of the death penalty and his belief that it does not deter crime. He also objects to the way death sentences are handed out, something he likens to a game of chance. "It's a lottery, a true lottery. You have no idea who gets it even if you knew the facts of the case first which end in execution and which don't."

And:

He predicts the Troy Davis case may point to the end of the death penalty. The Georgia man was executed despite widespread doubts about his guilt.

Earlier coverage from Alabama begins at the link; there's also coverage of the state's unique judicial override mechanism in capital cases.