Tennessee’s death penalty problems don’t end at lethal injection | Opinion

In December, Tennessee released a report on the state’s use of lethal injection. The findings were damning. Since resuming executions in 2018, Tennessee has failed to follow its own lethal injection rules, demonstrating a woefully negligent approach to acquiring, storing and administering the drugs. The state failed to test all three of the lethal injection drugs used for executions for toxins or potency, creating a “high risk of horrifying mistakes.”

The report proved what we have known for years – that the death penalty has no place in our society. Speaking as a business leader, a proud, lifetime Tennessean and a human being, it's time for the state to abolish capital punishment.

Tennessee is not the only state that has thrown lethal injection into a harsh light through its poor administration of this method of execution. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has had executions on hold since 2020 due to concerns about the method. Alabama stopped scheduling new executions earlier this year after two botched attempts at using it.

Capital punishment is expensive

These challenges are just the beginning. Capital punishment is incredibly costly. From 2017 to 2020, Tennessee spent $95,000 per execution – a massive sum of taxpayer dollars that could be better utilized elsewhere, such as redirecting these funds into existing programs for grants for new businesses in rural and underserved communities. Capital trials are up to four times more costly than trials resulting in life imprisonment. Those added costs come with no corresponding benefit to public safety. In fact, states that have abolished capital punishment have lower homicide rates than those that have not. Our government would better serve its citizens by spending our money on measures that make us safer and more prosperous.

Beyond costs, the death penalty's human flaws are as tragic as they are shocking. For every eight executions in the United States, one innocent death row inmate has been exonerated and released – typically after years of unjust incarceration. And worst of all, innocent people have been killed before they could prove their innocence.

The practice is racist and tragically error-prone

The death penalty is also racist in its application. People of color have accounted for a disproportionate 43% of executions since 1976. According to one study, Black defendants are more than four times more likely to be sentenced to death than similarly situated non-Black defendants. Although Black people make up just 16% of our state's population, nearly half of Tennessee's death row is Black. If we want to claim our state is a tolerant, fair and just place to live and work, we should do away with this horrifically error-prone and discriminatory practice.

Capital punishment could drive away businesses

Tennessee has done many good things to attract business to our beautiful, friendly state. But the death penalty decreases the benefits of our thoughtfully-created business-friendly climate, as companies have strongly voiced their feelings about investing in states with the death penalty. More than 250 prominent corporate leaders, led by Virgin Founder Richard Branson, have come together to call for an end to capital punishment everywhere. In an op-ed about capital punishment, billionaire investor Mike Novogratz wrote: "We have an obligation to voice our disapproval at such reckless mismanagement of taxes and — if change is not forthcoming — should choose to invest elsewhere.” Persisting in such an unpopular and ineffective practice gives pause to corporate leaders who would otherwise be strongly interested in bringing desirable opportunities to our state.

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Across the country, for the reasons listed above and many more, states are reevaluating the continued use of capital punishment. Tennessee has been at the front of this movement before. In 1990 we became one of the first four states to ban the execution of individuals with intellectual disabilities. For four decades – from 1960 to 2000 – the state carried out no executions at all. We can stand once again on the right side of history. Twenty-three states have already abolished the death penalty. Tennessee should be next.

Mac Bartine is CEO of Smartria, a Knoxville-based compliance-management tech platform.

This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Opinion: State's death penalty problems don’t end at lethal injection