WBA President gives testimony in opposition to reinstating Massachusetts death penalty

(BOSTON)– October 23, 2007– The President of the Women's Bar Association (WBA), Julia Huston, testified before the Judiciary Committee in opposition of House Bill 1511, which would reinstate the death penalty in Massachusetts. The WBA believes that a death penalty would make our society less just and understands the danger of mistaken convictions, the arbitrary and discriminatory features of the system, the lack of a deterrent effect and the costs. The WBA believes that the current mandatory sentence for first-degree murder - life without parole - is sufficient to meet public safety needs. Ms. Huston's testimony outlined the WBA's opposition of the bill in three key points, including fairness and justice, systemic equities, and scarce resources.

Read Ms. Huston's testimony below:

My name is Julia Huston. I am a partner in the law firm of Bromberg & Sunstein LLP of Boston and appear before you today in my capacity as President of the Women’s Bar Association of Massachusetts (the “WBA”). The WBA is an organization of nearly 1,400 women attorneys across the Commonwealth and is one of the largest and most influential women’s bar associations in the country.

It is my honor today to join with the other bar associations in opposition to restoring the death penalty in Massachusetts. The WBA has had a long-standing position against capital punishment. The WBA was founded in 1978. For almost as long, it has firmly and consistently opposed the death penalty. 

You may be wondering why the WBA is concerning about the death penalty. Of what interest is this proposed legislation to our organization? The answer to that question is simple: the death penalty touches the very heart of our organization’s purpose and work.

● First and foremost, the WBA is committed to making our system of laws more fair and just.

● Second, the WBA is committed to ending inequities based on economic status, race and gender.

● Third, the WBA is committed to using our precious public resources to benefit all the citizens of the Commonwealth.

Restoring the death penalty to Massachusetts would do violence to each and every one of these three goals.

First, Fairness and Justice. First and foremost, the WBA is committed to making our system of laws more fair and just. As you have heard from experts, the history of the death penalty in the United States is not a proud one. While all other industrialized nations have abandoned capital punishment in the 20^th century, the United States continues to keep company with repressive and undemocratic regimes and put its citizens to death for a variety of crimes. Massachusetts should resist the temptation to join the ranks of other states within our Union which have sanctioned the death penalty and thereby sanctioned a social policy of violence. We should strive to take our place beside those states which have wisely abandoned the death penalty and violence as social policy. 

Justice and fairness would not be served by reinstating the death penalty in our Commonwealth. Social science research has discredited the notion that the death penalty deters murder and other violent crimes. The states of Texas and California put more of their people to death than any other state in the nation, yet their murder rates are among the highest in the country. Massachusetts has experienced decreasing rates of violent crime over the years, yet we do not have the death penalty. Furthermore, studies show that states that have abolished the death penalty, or reinstated it, show no significant changes in their murder and violent crime rates.

The sole purpose served by the death penalty is vengeance and retribution. However satisfying vengeance may seem, a fair and just society cannot accept and eye-for-an-eye delivery of justice. The WBA believes firmly that vengeance and retribution have no place in our Commonwealth, and that justice and fairness cannot be achieved by reinstating capital punishment. We believe that as a society, we cannot condemn violence on one hand while sanctioning ultimate violence – taking a life – on the other hand.  We can be smarter and better than this, and we should strive to take our place beside other states which have abandoned violence as social policy.

Second, Systemic Equities.  Second, the WBA is committed to ending inequities based on race and economic status. The WBA opposes the death penalty because studies have shown that factors unrelated to the crime itself – primarily poverty, race and gender – greatly influence who is executed and who is not.

The death penalty does not exist in a vacuum. It is administered by the same under funded and overworked court system which is responsible for administering all of our Commonwealth’s civil and criminal laws. Although we strive to be a nation of laws and not of men, our criminal justice system depends on the judgments of real men and real women – each and every one a fallible human being.

(1)  Racial Bias.  What this means is that biases affect outcomes and mistakes our made.  Again and again, studies show that racial bias permeates the criminal justice system and that African-Americans are arrested more frequently and punished more severely for the same crimes than are white Americans. African Americans make up a far higher proportion of death row inmates then their proportion in the US population.  Studies also show that the race of the victim tends to greatly influence the penalty imposed, with those who kill a white person being more likely to receive the death penalty that those who kill an African-American.

(2)  Economic Status.  Social Science research also shows that one of the most telling facts which determines whether or not the death penalty is imposed is not the circumstances of the crime, but rather the quality of the legal representation. It is a chilling fact that you are more likely to escape the death penalty if you can hire a private attorney than if you are represented by a court-appointed lawyer.  Notwithstanding the quality of Massachusetts’ court-appointed criminal defense bar, defending a capital case is incredibly expensive and time-consuming, typically taking between 700-1000 hours, and court-appointed counsel fees are usually much less than the lawyer’s hourly expenses. While wealthy defendants who hire their own counsel are generally spared the death penalty, poorer defendants do not have that opportunity.  The WBA is committed to ending inequities based on economic status and believes firmly that economics should not determine who lives and who dies in this Commonwealth.

Third, Scarce Resources.  The WBA is committed to using our precious public resources to benefit all of the citizens of the Commonwealth. If Massachusetts were to reinstate the death penalty, it would result in increased competition for the already limited pool of public funds.

As it stands now, the legal needs of the poor are largely going unmet. A number of years ago, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court concluded its study of legal needs of the poor in Massachusetts and found that 85% of their legal needs go unmet every year. According to the Court, the poor are unable to obtain representation to resolve over 200,000 “significant legal problems” each year. If the death penalty were reinstated, that number would surely increase.

We can choose to spend millions of dollars to put one person to death, or we can choose to spend those dollars on our families. In Massachusetts, thousands of the Commonwealth’s children will today, as they did yesterday, go to bed without basic medical care, food, and shelter. Tens of thousands of working families wait for subsidized day care which simply does not exist. On behalf of the Women’s Bar Association, we urge you to spend our tax dollars on our families rather than sinking those dollars into putting people to death. 

For all of these reasons, the Women’s Bar Association opposes reinstatement of the death penalty and urges you to give an unfavorable report to H1511.

About the Women’s Bar Association of Massachusetts

Founded in 1978 by a group of activist women lawyers, the Women’s Bar Association is one of the oldest and largest bar associations in the country. Today, the organization boasts a membership of more than 1300 women lawyers, judges and law students across Massachusetts. The WBA is committed to the full and equal participation of women in the legal profession and in a just society. The WBA works to achieve this mission through committees and task forces, and by developing and promoting a legislative agenda to address society’s most critical social and legal issues.  Other WBA activities include drafting amicus briefs, studying employment issues affecting women, encouraging women to enter the judiciary, recognizing the achievement of women in the law, and providing pro bono services to women in need through supporting its charitable sister organization, the Women’s Bar Foundation. For more information, visit www.womensbar.org.