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HISTORY: The Death Penalty Through the Life of Anthony Amsterdam

By Death Penalty Information Center

Posted on Sep 13, 2007 | Updated on Sep 25, 2024

Critical devel­op­ments in the mod­ern his­to­ry of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the United States are exam­ined through a bio­graph­i­cal sketch of Anthony Amsterdam (pic­tured), one of the nation’s most respect­ed death penal­ty attor­neys and legal schol­ars, in the lat­est edi­tion of New York University’s Law School Magazine. Prof. Amsterdam argued Furman v. Georgia before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972, result­ing in the over­turn­ing of all death penal­ty laws and the spar­ing of over 600 inmates on death row. The arti­cle, ​“A Man Against the Machine” by Nadya Labi, recounts Tony Amsterdam’s work with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund lead­ing up to Furman and fol­lows his legal jour­ney through the Court’s Gregg v. Georgia deci­sion rein­stat­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in 1976, and into to today’s death penal­ty debate. Amsterdam recalled his reac­tion upon hear­ing of the Furman deci­sion: ​“You rep­re­sent peo­ple under sen­tence of death, you’re always walk­ing around with a dozen, 50 lives on your shoul­ders.” What he remem­bered was: ​“The feel­ing of weight being lift­ed, know­ing that these guys…you wor­ry about each and every one sep­a­rate­ly. I felt free for the first time in years. I thought, ​‘That job is done. Those guys are gonna live.’ ​”

Today, Prof. Amsterdam is the Edward Weinfeld Professor of Law at New York University Law School, and he has played a sig­nif­i­cant role in shap­ing more than 30 years of death penal­ty lit­i­ga­tion and in train­ing future cap­i­tal defend­ers. He is known as an acces­si­ble and trust­ed ​“spe­cial resource” for death penal­ty attor­neys, and his stu­dents have worked on a num­ber of high-pro­file appel­late cas­es, includ­ing Atkins v. Virginia and Roper v. Simmons — the Supreme Court cas­es that end­ed the death penal­ty for those with men­tal retar­da­tion and juve­nile offend­ers, respec­tive­ly.

The arti­cle con­cludes with a pre­dic­tion from David Kendall, for­mer coun­selor to President Bill Clinton and Amsterdam’s long-time friend and col­league, ​“When this coun­try repu­di­ates the death penal­ty, as it will, peo­ple will look back at him and say, he devised the cam­paign that led to this.”
(NYU Law School Magazine, Autumn 2007). Read the arti­cle. See Articles, Resources and History of the Death Penalty.


Citation Guide
HISTORY: The Death Penalty Through the Life of Anthony Amsterdam | Death Penalty Information Center

NEWS BRIEF — Illinois Marks 10th Anniversary of Death Penalty Abolition

It has now been ten years since Governor Pat Quinn signed into law a bill end­ing the death penal­ty in Illinois. The abo­li­tion bill, signed on March 9, 2011, was the cul­mi­na­tion of eleven years of debate after Governor George Ryan imposed a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in 2000 and then issued four par­dons and 167 com­mu­ta­tions, clear­ing the state’s death row in 2003.

The Illinois mora­to­ri­um, imposed fol­low­ing a year in which U.S. exe­cu­tions peaked at 98, was a cat­a­lyst for rethink­ing the death penal­ty across the coun­try. At that time, 38 states autho­rized cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. One year after Ryan’s mass com­mu­ta­tion, the New York Court of Appeals declared its death-penal­ty statute uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. The court sub­se­quent­ly applied that deci­sion to the rest of the pris­on­ers on the state’s death row in 2007. The New York leg­is­la­ture then opt­ed not to cor­rect the con­sti­tu­tion­al error, effec­tive­ly abol­ish­ing the state’s death penal­ty. Legislatures in New Jersey (2007) and New Mexico (2009) also repealed their cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment laws in the decade of the 2000s. 

Illinois became the first of five leg­is­la­tures to repeal their death penal­ties in the 2010s, fol­lowed by Connecticut (2012), Maryland (2013), Nebraska (2015, halt­ed by ref­er­en­dum), and New Hampshire (2018, vetoed; and 2019, veto over­rid­den). State courts also declared cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment laws uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in Delaware (2016) and Washington (2018). In 2020, Colorado became the sixth state in a decade to abol­ish the death penal­ty. The Virginia leg­is­la­ture vot­ed in February to repeal its death penal­ty, and will become the first Southern state to end cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment once Governor Northam signs the abolition bill.

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Sources

Eric Zorn, Column: Abolition of the death penal­ty in Illinois kicked off a decade of crim­i­nal jus­tice progress, Chicago Tribune, March 5, 2021.