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| Holding cells in Texas' Death House, where inmates spend their last hours before being put to death. The Walls Unit, Huntsville, Texas |
How America can - and will - abolish the death penalty
New Hampshire has just failed to abolish the death penalty - by 1 vote. Given that the Granite State has not actually executed anyone since 1939, you might think this doesn't matter much. But, obviously, it matters to the one man on death row in New Hampshire, a cop-killer called Michael Addison. It matters, also, to the broader campaign to scrap capital punishment in America. And despite the setback in New Hampshire, the abolitionists are slowly winning.
America is unusual among rich countries in that it still executes people. It does so because its politicians are highly responsive to voters, who mostly favour the death penalty. However, that majority is shrinking, from 80% in 1994 to 60% last year. Young Americans are less likely to support it than their elders. Non-whites, who will one day be a majority, are solidly opposed. 6 states have abolished it since 2007, bringing the total to 18 out of 50. The number of executions each year has fallen from a peak of 98 in 1999 to 39 last year.
Many people regret this. Some feel that death is the only fitting punishment for murderers: that it satisfies society's need for retribution. Some find a religious justification, such as the line in Exodus that calls for: "life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth". Such appeals to emotion or faith are hard to answer, although the Bible also has passages about not casting the first stone, and many conservative evangelicals have ended up in the odd position of prizing life when it comes to abortion, but not when it comes to prisoners (the Catholic church is pro-life on both counts). However, in a secular democracy a law of such gravity must have some compelling rational justification, which the death penalty does not.
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Source: The Economist, April 25, 2014