Some abolitionists believe that Lockett's sordid death will one day be remembered as the death blow — as it were — to capital punishment. I am more skeptical. As long as the debate is about gruesome methods and individual cases, the death penalty as an institution may rise and decline but I fear it won't be definitively abolished. Activists have powerful arguments when they highlight the inhumane killing techniques, botched executions, the executions of people later believed to have been innocent, the egregious racial biases in the application of the death penalty, and the evidence that executions do not deter violent crime. But those arguments will not lead to abolition.
For that to happen, abolitionists and political leaders will have to speak about the death penalty in the clear language of moral principle. It is much more palatable to be against executions when the executed is innocent or had an unfair trial or is mentally unfit. It is more difficult to oppose the death penalty when the executed has committed heinous crimes and the method of execution seems painless.
One of the last Western countries to [abolish the death penalty] was France, in 1981. In France, as in the U.S. today, the death penalty enjoyed general support. What brought about the end of the death penalty in France was a top-down approach. Then-President Francois Mitterrand made abolition of capital punishment one of his priorities and persuaded legislators to pass a law to that effect. Such an approach seems almost inconceivable in today's America, yet it may be the only way for abolition to triumph here.
The issue in France, and later in the European Union, was framed as a moral concern for society as a whole. The death penalty was considered incompatible with the basic principles of human rights.
Source: Op-Ed by Moshik Temkin, Los Angeles Times, May 26, 2014. Mr. Temkin is a historian and an associate professor at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.