A Canadian newspaper editorial cites a 2016 survey that says 58 percent of Canadians favor the return of the death penalty.
The editorial board of the Ottawa Sun took issue with Amnesty International Canada (AIC) criticizing Florida’s use of the death penalty.
Canada abolished capital punishment in 1976 — the same year the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty.
The last execution in Canada was when Ronald Turpin and Arthur Lucas were hanged at Toronto’s Don Jail in 1962.
The Sun’s editorial board suggested that AIC should focus more on the growing numbers of Canadians wanting to bring back the death penalty instead of spending time in Florida fighting the death penalty in another country.
In the major democratic governments in the world, all but three have abolished the death penalty — India, Japan and the U.S.
The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) reports that as of July 1, 2017, there are 2,817 Death Row inmates in the U.S.
According to the DPIC, since 1976 the U.S. has carried out 1,465 executions.
Two California ballot initiatives in 2016 involved capital punishment. The first resulted in the death penalty staying on the books — the second sped up the execution process. Multiple lawsuits, however, have stalled executions since 2006.
California’s Death Row male inmates are housed at San Quentin State Prison and the women at Chowchilla Women’s Facility. The state has approximately 750 Death Row inmates. All but 53 are men.
According to the DPIC, since December 21, 2017, Gabriel Solache is the 161st person exonerated from death row.
The Sun’s editorial board says that the death penalty “is wrong.”
They argued that capital punishment “is more expensive than imprisonment, has little effectiveness as a deterrent, and risks the execution of innocent people.”
