The US stands alone among democratic nations in retaining capital punishment. Use increased during the period of 1973 through the mid-1990s, but has been declining since then. Whereas abolition strategies once focused on the Supreme Court, and these would likely have been successful if the 2016 election had resulted in a President (Hillary) Clinton, those strategies have been largely abandoned in the face of a reconfigured and highly conservative Court after three appointments by the Trump administration. New strategies by death penalty abolitionists have targeted state legislatures, however, with great success. Twenty-three states now ban the practice, and three states (and the federal government) have moratoria in place preventing any executions. Recent legislative debates on the death penalty have targeted its racist character and highlighted the possibility of executing the innocent. Advocacy has increasingly targeted public opinion rather than the courts. With ever-decreasing numbers of death sentences, with gruesome stories of botched executions associated with a large share of all those still carried out, and with complaints that the US Supreme Court is not enforcing its own precedents concerning, for example, executing the severely mentally ill, the death penalty is becoming a political liability for its one-time supporters. Further, it is causing the Court to undermine its own public legitimacy. We explain the modern history of the death penalty, the multiple paradoxes of its continued existence, and the implications of its demise.
This lecture is organised in the framework of the Transnational project.