Protesters mourn 1000th US execution in 30 years

Death penalty opponents marked a somber occasion overnight as North Carolina took the distinction of putting the 1000th person to death since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976. The state put convicted murderer Kenneth Boyd, 57, to death by lethal injection at 2am, as around 100 protesters marked the occasion with a candlelight vigil. Boyd was pronounced dead 15 minutes later. The resumption of the death penalty almost 30 years ago has long been a major issue for humanitarian groups, who often point to the fact that only a handful of countries around the world–none of them Western-style democracies–still mete out the ultimate punishment for crimes. According to Human Rights Watch, the US joins nations known as serial human rights violators–including China, Iran and Vietnam–in explicitly condemning its own citizens to death. "Americans pride themselves on their human decency and common sense, yet the death penalty contradicts both," Human Rights Watch US program director Jamie Fellner said in a statement recently. "The country should reject such senseless cruelty... An eye for an eye is no basis for justice in the 21st century." On Dec. 1, Amnesty International announced that it was bringing a busload of people to Raleigh, NC, to demonstrate against the execution. They and other groups had been pushing for a stay of execution or clemency for Boyd. According to Reuters, police arrested more than a dozen protesters for trespassing after they crossed onto prison property and knelt in prayer. As part of the demonstration, death penalty opponents read the names of the other 999 executed convicts. Opposition to the death penalty appears to be growing in the US, a fact many organizations attribute to news of recently exonerated death row inmates and fears that state governments may have executed innocent people. "One hundred and twenty-two individuals have been exonerated from death row since 1973, meaning that one wrongfully convicted person has been released for every eight that have been executed," William F. Schulz, Amnesty International USA's executive director said in a statement. "Public officials should take note of both the gruesome nature of this milestone and the failures of a system that is allowed to function with such a high error rate. If they do, they will clearly see that the time to abolish the death penalty is long overdue." But supporters of the death penalty argue that it serves as a just punishment for heinous crimes. In a statement released on Dec. 2, Throw Away the Key head Michael Paranzino derided the demonstrators: "The idea that we would mourn the 1000th murderer that died when there are 600,000 families [of murder victims] who will never recover–that's where I think this debate has to be focused–the lasting harm to entire families when people are murdered." Virginia and Texas are responsible for almost half of all executions, and the South as a whole for more than two-thirds, Amnesty International noted. Only 13 states and the District of Columbia bar the death penalty.