Duke University Prof. Brandon Garrett on recent commutations and the future of the death penalty
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Duke Law Professor Brandon Garrett (Courtesy photo)
There are a lot of reasons that the death penalty is almost never imposed anymore. Not only is it hugely and uniquely expensive to apply and proven to be of no use in deterring crime, but stacks of evidence also confirm it has long been applied unjustly. Tragically, the death penalty is mostly reserved for cases involving defendants who are poor and of color and victims who are white and there are many cases in which the horror of innocent people being sentenced to death has occurred.
Both President Biden and former Gov. Roy Cooper lent further momentum to the death penalty’s slow but steady decline recently with a series of death row commutations, and as Newsline learned in a recent conversation with the head of the Wilson Center for Science and Justice at Duke University Law School, Professor Brandon Garrett, we’ve reached a point here in North Carolina and around the country at which the death penalty’s full abolition is now on the horizon.
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