We believe that the death penalty has no place in our modern criminal justice system.

UDAA continues to advocate for the repeal of capital punishment in Utah. We believe that the death penalty is outdated, unfairly implemented, and unconstitutional.

  • “The death penalty is not about whether people deserve to die for the crimes they commit. The real question of capital punishment in this country is, do we deserve to kill?”

    Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption

  • "The death penalty is incompatible with human rights and human dignity."

    International Commission Against the Death Penalty

  • "Our criminal justice system is fallible. We know it, even though we don't like to admit it. It is fallible despite the best efforts of most within it to do justice. And this fallibility is, at the end of the day, the most compelling, persuasive, and winning argument against a death penalty."

    Eliot Spitzer

  • “Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders."

    Albert Camus

  • "The UN Human Rights Office, with its mandate to promote and protect all human rights, advocates for the universal abolition of the death penalty. Our position is based on the fundamental nature of the right to life, the unacceptable risk of executing innocent people, and the absence of proof that the death penalty deters crime."

    United Nations Human Rights Office

  • “You can release an innocent man from prison, but you can’t release him from the grave.”

    Freddie Lee Pitts, death row exoneree

Capital punishment can never be implemented perfectly by an imperfect justice system.

Here are some reasons why we believe that the death penalty should be repealed in Utah:

Innocent people may be executed.

  • For every eight people executed, one person on death row has been exonerated (Equal Justice Initiative).

  • The number of innocent people on death row is likely more than double the amount of people that have been exonerated and released from death row (Gross et al., 2014).

  • At least 1 in 25 people on death row are statistically likely to be innocent (Gross et al., 2014).

  • In cases where an individual was sentenced to death and subsequently exonerated, the most likely explanation for the wrongful conviction was misconduct by officials involved in the case. Other explanations included perjury, false accusations, and false forensic evidence (Death Penalty Information Center, 2021).

The death penalty does not serve as a deterrent for crime.

  • No evidence exists to support capital punishment as a deterrent for crime (Cohen-Cole et al., 2006).

  • States that have the death penalty do not have lower crime or murder rates than states without the death penalty. States that have repealed the death penalty have not experienced increased rates of crime or murder (American Civil Liberties Union).

  • The threat of capital punishment does not deter those who commit crime under the influence of drugs/alcohol, extreme emotion, or mental illness (Amnesty International, 2017).

The death penalty is more expensive than life in prison without the possibility of parole.

  • The costs of pretrial and appeals that are associated with the death penalty are much greater than those of other sentences. On top of these costs, the taxpayer must also pay for a life sentence if the death sentence is overturned (Amnesty International, 2017).

  • Death penalty cases take much more time than other cases. More than half of those currently on death row have been there for over 18 years (DPIC).

  • The average cost of defending a trial in a death penalty case is eight times that of other murder cases (Gould & Greenman, 2010).

  • Due to the number of death penalty cases that get overturned, securing a single execution can cost the state upwards of $30 million (DPIC, 2009).

The death penalty is applied with racial prejudice.

  • People of color have accounted for a disproportionate 43% of total executions since 1976 and 55% of those currently awaiting execution (ACLU).

  • A study in Philadelphia found that individuals of color are nearly four times more likely to receive the death penalty than their white counterparts (DPIC, 1998).

  • The race of the victim was found to influence the likelihood of receiving the death penalty in 82% of the studies reviewed by the United States General Accounting Office (U.S. GAO, 1990).

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