Executing Dylann Roof would reinforce racist system

The absolute outrage over Dylann Roof’s racially motivated massacre of nine conregants at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston is completely appropriate and justified. But executing Roof, as both the state and now the federal government hope to do, actually reinforces the problems in a system that disproportionately targets people of color.

The United States is essentially the only liberal democracy that still practices the death penalty, which is more expensive than life imprisonment and, according to studies, not a deterrent to crime.

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The death penalty has always had a deeply racist element to it, particularly in the American South: 55 percent of those awaiting execution are minorities, and studies show that minority defendants are more likely to receive the death penalty if the victim is white. Executing the white Dylann Roof for killing black victims hands death-penalty supporters an argument to undermine the racist realities of the system.

Executing Dylann Roof is also a convenient way to see him simply as one bad actor and ignore the racial ideology that drove him to commit these heinous acts. Executing him will not remove the blight of racism and xenophobia that is on the rise.

Calling for the death penalty also defies the message of forgiveness from the family members of those killed at Emanuel A.M.E.. These family members expressed so powerfully the message of the Christian faith that brought the practitioners to Emanuel. It is a faith that disavows vengeance and demands forgiveness. It is a faith that has always been incompatible with the death penalty as its worship is directed toward a victim of an unjust execution by the state.

As Coretta Scott King has said: “as one whose husband and mother-in-law have both died the victims of murder assassination, I stand firmly and unequivocally opposed to the death penalty.… An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed of retaliation. Justice is never advanced in the taking of a human life. Morality is never upheld by legalized murder.”

Executing Roof will not make us a more whole society. It will simply reinforce a broken system where poor and minority defendants suffer the most.

This story was originally published June 4, 2016 at 1:04 PM with the headline "Executing Dylann Roof would reinforce racist system."