Jeffrey Toobin, writing in The New Yorker, used the current scramble among states to procure the drugs for lethal injections as a paradigm of the much longer effort to make the death penalty palatable to the American public. “The story of the death penalty in this country,” he wrote, “illustrates a characteristically American faith in a technological solution to any problem.” However, Toobin concluded, technology can not cover up the broader problems of capital punishment: “The oxymoronic quest for humane executions only accentuates the absurdity of allowing the death penalty in a civilized society.” He ended highlighting the declining public support for the death penalty, as well as the drop in executions and death sentences across the country.
(J. Toobin, “Cruel and Unusual,” The New Yorker, December 23, 2013). See Lethal Injection and History of Death Penalty. For more information about the declining use of the death penalty, see DPIC’s Year End Report.
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