Equal Justice

Disparities call use of death penalty into question

Tuesday evening, Kimberley McCarthy, 51, was set to go to the death chamber at Texas’ Huntsville Prison. McCarthy, who had once been employed as a nursing home worker, became addicted to crack cocaine. A crack addiction requires money. And some addicts will do anything to get that money.

In July 1997, McCarthy knocked on neighbor Dorothy Booth’s door and asked to borrow a cup of sugar.

Booth, a 71-year-old retired college professor, agreed to the request. McCarthy entered Booth’s home and proceeded to attack the her with a candelabra. At one point McCarthy held Booth’s hand on a cutting board and severed a finger to steal her wedding ring. She then stabbed Booth to death with a butcher knife.

McCarthy is also a suspect in two other robbery/ slayings—both of women in their 80s.

To many she would seem like an ideal candidate for the gurney. Her jury obviously thought so.

But justice will have to wait in McCarthy’s case. Although her appeals had been turned down all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, a state judge issued a reprieve so her attorneys could pursue another appeal based on the racial makeup of her jury. The judge set a new execution date of April 3.

We don’t know if this new racial angle has any merit. That’s for a court to decide.

However, since McCarthy was to become one of the few women executed since capital punishment was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court, her case spotlights the uneasy feeling even some dedicated death penalty supporters have with the idea of executing women.

McCarthy would have been the first woman put to death in the U.S. since 2010. Only 13 women have been executed since 1976—three in Texas. More than 1,300 men have been executed in the U.S. during same time period.

Considering women commit about 10 percent of all murders in this country, the disparity is glaring. About 3,150 convicted killers sit on death row today. Only 63—about 2 percent—are women.

There has always been a reluctance to execute women in our society. It’s a remnant of traditional gender roles. But it has no place in the justice system. There are other disparities in death penalty cases to be sure. Race plays a role—both in perpetrator and victim. So does an offender’s economic status.

We support the death penalty. Heinous crimes call for the supreme punishment.

But we also believe in equal justice under law. That’s not happening. And until it does, it calls into question the use of capital punishment in this country.