The Death Penalty: Long gone in Costa Rica, still in use in the U.S. of A.

I was doing some reading on the history of Costa Rica today and in the process, I was reminded of a startling fact: Not only does Costa Rica have no death penalty, but there has been no death penalty in Costa Rica since 1882. That's right, 1882! Now, to be frank, the president who abolished the death penalty, General Tomás Guardia, was an unelected dictator. Additionally, at least according to my former Human Rights in Latin America teacher (who is now Costa Rica's ambassador to Japan), his motivations were partially selfish: the penalty at the time for embezzling public funds was death and he had his hand in the public cookie jar more than once. Regardless, subsequent democratically elected presidents could have reinstated the death penalty but instead, it has remained abolished for over 125 years.

As my readers have probably assumed by now, I am adamantly opposed to capital punishment. The state simply should not kill people, even if they are guilty of heinous crimes. Whats more, the criminal justice system is not an exact science. By its very nature, it is subject to human error. As a result, the possibility will always exist that an innocent person will be killed.

Unfortunately, recent news from the United States, which has executed 1,112 people since 1976, suggests that this possibility remains frighteningly real. I'm talking about the case of Troy Davis, an African American man from Savannah, Georgia who was sentenced to death in 1991 for killing a white police officer, Mark Allen McPhail. The facts in this case are highly suspicious. There is no physical evidence tying Davis to the crime scene. Over half of the witnesses who testified against Davis have since recanted their testimony. They now say they were intimidated by the police and forced to tell the court that Davis was guilty. Further, it cannot be ingored that Davis is black, that Mark Allen McPhail was not only a police officer, but a white police officer, and that all of this is taking place in Georgia. These facts ought to speak for themselves. Thankfully, the Supreme Court has agreed to stay the execution, which was supposed to take place yesterday, so they can decide whether to allow Davis to appeal the decision of the state of Georgia. However, there is no guarantee that they will agree to hear his case and as a result, Davis may only have one more week to live.

If only the United States were as civilized as Costa Rica, this whole debacle, which drips of racism and barbarism, would never have happened. Hopefully one day, America's leaders and the American people will take a lesson from our neighbor to the south and abolish this unconscionable abuse of human rights once and for all.