The Griffin Editorial: An eye for an eye makes the world go blind

Despite the controversial nature of capital punishment, its use across the country – federally and in the 27 states it is still legal in – has sharply risen, with 2025 marking the most prisoners executed in the United States since 2009.

On average, every year four death row inmates are completely exonerated for their accused crimes, with 202 people having been exonerated since 1972, when capital punishment was briefly suspended in the U.S. Cases like the execution of Marcellus Williams in Missouri, who was executed in 2024 despite no DNA evidence linking him to the crime and objections from the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney, have become all too common amid the renewed fervor many Southern states have taken in their attempt to be “tougher” on crime.

Williams isn’t the only person presumed innocent to have been executed in recent years. Seven other people in the past 10 years have been executed in the U.S. who are strongly believed to have been innocent of the crimes they were convicted of, which begs the question: is justice being served when eight of the 239 people executed since 2016 have likely had no connection to the crime they were executed for? 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been one of the biggest proponents of the death penalty in recent years. His state, which has had the most death row exonerations in the U.S. since 1973, has also executed the most prisoners in recent years, leading the way in 2025 with 19 people being sent to die. DeSantis has also ushered in new legislation targeting more death penalty convictions; in 2023, he signed a bill allowing the death penalty to be imposed when a jury has an eight-vote majority instead of a unanimous decision.

“I do think the death penalty could be a strong deterrent, if you had this stuff happen quicker,” DeSantis said of the death penalty in 2020. The issue is, there is no evidence the death penalty has been, or ever will be, a deterrent for violent crime. Amnesty International found that in the 27 states that have the death penalty, the murder rate per 100,000 was 5.71, compared with the 23 states without the death penalty, where the murder rate was just 4.02.

This data applies to countries other than the United States as well. When our neighbor Canada outlawed capital punishment in 1975, it saw a 44% decrease in violent crime in the first 27 years after abolishing it.

The evidence is clear that over the years the death penalty has not prevented violent crime, and it risks punishing the innocent far too often. Lawmakers have co-opted the practice to show they are tougher on crime despite dwindling public support for its use. We have to ask whether this is what we consider justice in our country. Do we believe that “an eye for an eye” is how we want to move forward, rather than focusing on rehabilitative justice?

-PGN