Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) opposes capital punishment in all cases, considering it an “intolerable denial of civil liberties [that] is uncivilized in theory and unfair and inequitable in practice.”
It was therefore unsurprising when Yasmin Cader and Jeffery Robinson—the current and past directors of the ACLU’s Trone Center for Justice and Equality—published an op-ed arguing against imposing the death penalty on Robert Bowers, the convicted murderer of eleven Jewish worshipers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue.
Their argument is compelling, premised on the “morally bankrupt and inescapably racist” nature of the death penalty, and pointing out the one-sided judicial procedures that allow prosecutors to obtain a “death-qualified” jury.