End The Death Penalty In South Carolina.

End The Death Penalty In South Carolina.
Why this petition matters

Over the last decade the state of South Carolina has not been able to carry out the death penalty because they cannot get the drugs for lethal injection. South Carolina has only been able to force those on death row to die by burning them to death from the inside by lethal injection of drugs with giving those on death row the option to die by burning to death of electrocution by electric chair. The SC GOP thinks it is now time to restart executions and introduced South Carolina State Senate Bill 200. S.200 would make electrocution the default form execution and would allow the state to kill those on death row forcibly by burning them to death by electrocuting them by electric chair and allow for those on death row put to death to have the option to die by being shot to death by firing squad or die by lethal injection if those options are available at the time. Instead of debating whether the death penalty should be carried out by lethal injection, the electric chair, or firing squads we should end the death penalty all together. We are now calling on South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster to commute every death sentence to life in prison. #EndTheDeathPenaltySC
"These are the results of giving the state the power to determine who deserves death:
Innocent people sentenced to death-
*Since 1973, over 160 former death row inmates have been found innocent and exonerated in the United States. [source]
*It is not clear how many innocent people have been executed, but some studies estimate the innocence rate may be as high as 4%. [source]
*From 2000-2011, there was an average of 5 death row exonerations per year. [source]
Unfair application among the guilty-
*Men are drastically more likely to receive death sentences. As of fall 2018, women make up just 2% of the total death row population. [source]
*Additionally, minorities are disproportionately sentenced to death; black Americans make up just 13% of the United States population [source] and 42% of death row prisoners. [source]
Note: one interpretation of this statistic could lead to the incorrect conclusion that black Americans are more likely to commit violent crimes. However, reports which analyze crime statistics across both race and economic status find that the latter is the factor which most accurately predicts whether a person will commit crime. In other words: low-income, black Americans have roughly the same likelihood of committing crime as low-income, white Americans. [source] Black Americans tend to receive harsher sentences for the same crimes because of racism in the judicial process (particularly during jury selection). [source]
*Race of the victim also seems to play a large role in sentencing. A study in California found that those convicted of killing white people were more than three times as likely to be sentenced to death as those convicted of killing black people, and more than four times more likely as those convicted of killing Latino people. [source]
No effect on crime rates-
*The death penalty does not work as a deterrent for crime. States which have abolished the death penalty experienced no change in their murder rates. [source]
*A poll of 500 police chiefs found that they don't view the death penalty as an effective deterrent. [source]" -Rehumanize International
"I wish I could tell you that the state of Alabama made an honest mistake. I wish I could tell you that it had nothing to do with the color of my skin...but when I was convicted, the prosecutor said: 'We don't have the right n***** today, but at least we got a n***** off the street.'" –Anthony Ray Hinton.
“Incarceration Reform” Spring Lecture, hosted by the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, in Pittsburgh, PA. March 15, 2019.