Why Capital Punishment Is Dying Out

[DonViejo]

April 24, 2021 at 11:44 am EDT By Taegan Goddard

George Will: “Today, 53 percent of Americans live either in the 23 states that have abolished it or the three others where governors have imposed a moratorium on executions. Twelve states with death penalty laws have not executed anyone for at least a decade. And a majority of Americans oppose capital punishment for murder when prompted to consider the alternative of life in prison without the possibility of parole.”

“Capital punishment is ending because of a wholesome squeamishness that reflects (in Chief Justice Earl Warren’s words) society’s ‘evolving standards of decency.’ And because attempts to make it neither cruel nor unusual have made its implementation increasingly capricious, and hence morally absurd.”

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https://politicalwire.com/2021/04/24/why-capital-punishment-is-dying-out/

[SYFROYH]

1. I think I'm ready to stop arguing for it even when agency is certain and the case was heinous.

And there are no mitigating factors.

[Klaralven]

2. It has been abolished before. It will be back.

In the Tenth Century A.D., hanging became the usual method of execution in Britain. In the following century, William the Conqueror would not allow persons to be hanged or otherwise executed for any crime, except in times of war. This trend would not last, for in the Sixteenth Century, under the reign of Henry VIII, as many as 72,000 people are estimated to have been executed.

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/facts-and-research/history-of-the-death-penalty/early-history-of-the-death-penalty

[Humanist_Activist]

4. Uhm, there's a difference between Monarchs changing minds and society changing its ethics...

one is slightly more likely to stick around.

[USALiberal]

3. Many DUers still support it! Nt

[Hortensis]

5. "society's 'evolving standards of decency.'" Yup. MLK's "arc of the moral universe."

Humanist Activist is right of course about the pace of society changing its ethics... That goes both ways.

Humanism, the concept of the worth and rights of the individual, only began in the western world around the 14th century. Executions in those days could be unbelievably horrific public entertainments. In any case, that liberalization of principles and philosophy has taken all this time to advance our society to this point, though we trail some others.

[Klaralven]

6. Increased social conflict, economic collapse, war, and a religious revival is all it takes

With increased global population, climate change impacts, future pandemics, and exhaust of cheap hydrocarbons and other resources, it's a good bet that capital punishment will be back by 2100.

[Elessar Zappa]

7. Depends how society responds to those problems.

No future is guaranteed but we can certainly keep making society better if we have the will. We've been on an upward path since the Enlightenment and I see no reason that it has to end.

[Hortensis]

9. +1. Never a straight line, and advances always cause counterreactions.

Nothing new about that, just scary to be living through a major, desperate backlash by the perennial losers.

[Hortensis]

8. :) Ever wonder why almost no one gets killed on freeways?

Billions of travels every day by every possible type of distracted, angry, dysfunctional person zooming along, and yet the individual need to survive does an amazingly good job of making the whole work.

Not saying it can't happen. Our interconnectedness, interdependence, and mass lemmingness could bring us all down. But we have a lot to live for and a lot of assets to help us go that way, and I'd put my own money elsewhere.

[Mr. Ected]

10. We came SO close to another 4 years of Donald J Trump and his breed of fascism

You think the American Fascist Party would have any qualms in amping up the volume of executions? No and hell no. They rule by fear and it would give them a forum to kill one person of color after another. They would probably figure out a way to be sure their corporate sponsors made a profit off it, too. Pay per view.

I'm not ready to believe that America is moving on from capital punishment. As long as 45% of the population would vote for monsters, I'm not ready to concede that their influence has been neutered.