EDITORIALS: ​“The Year in Death”

The Washington Post edi­to­ri­al­ized about the death penal­ty in 2005, com­ment­ing on many of the points made in DPIC’s Year End Report:

[T]he over­all ten­den­cy is unmis­tak­able: At least for now, with crime and mur­der rates low and the threat of wrong­ful con­vic­tions on peo­ple’s minds, the death penal­ty does not have the same attrac­tion that it once had.

Finally end­ing the death penal­ty in America, how­ev­er, will not hap­pen quick­ly. Despite any num­ber of DNA exon­er­a­tions and some seri­ous ques­tions raised about whether inno­cent peo­ple have been exe­cut­ed, pub­lic sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment remains unnerv­ing­ly strong, if not quite as strong as it was a few years ago. What is pos­si­ble now is to begin trans­lat­ing the appar­ent­ly less­ened enthu­si­asm for exe­cu­tions into laws that per­mit it less often. In only a few states does cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment oper­ate as a day-to-day fea­ture of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. In some states that per­mit it, it is nev­er — or almost nev­er — used at all. The exam­ple of New York shows that when pol­i­cy­mak­ers are forced to con­front the util­i­ty of a large­ly the­o­ret­i­cal death penal­ty, they may turn their backs on it or at least restrict it. It is time for oppo­nents of the death penal­ty to begin sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly offer­ing oth­er states that oppor­tu­ni­ty as well.

(Washington Post, Dec. 31, 2005). See DPIC’s 2005 Year End Report.