Document Type
Essay
Publication Date
2015
Publication Information
49 U. Richmond L. Rev. 845 (2015).
Abstract
From the Essay
This symposium essay sounds a cautionary note while ultimately remaining agnostic about what the future holds for the death penalty. There are a variety of reasons to be skeptical about the abolitionists' newfound optimism. The usual reasons for optimism about ending the death penalty-sharp declines in public support for the death penalty and of the ultimate sanction-do not necessarily portend the demise of the death penalty. This essay argues that other factors can account for recent declines in capital punishment and that there are countervailing factors suggesting that the American death penalty is alive and well, despite what may prove to be a period of relative hibernation.
More fundamentally, to make a credible case that the "machinery of death" is no longer a well-oiled machine but rather a "clunker" destined for the scrapyard, the optimists must take account of the so-called "politics of death." The death penalty did not come back with a vengeance in the wake of Furman v. Georgia by accident or coincidence. The problem, from the abolitionist perspective, was that Furman unleashed political forces that united prosecutors, legislators, and judges in "death penalty" states in the effort to liberalize and utilize the ultimate sanction.' Unless these forces have radically changed-and this essay finds no evidence that they have-there is reason to believe that the American experiment with capital punishment will continue, in some form, well into the foreseeable future.
Recommended Citation
Stephen F. Smith,
Has The “Machinery of Death” Become A Clunker?,
49 U. Richmond L. Rev. 845 (2015)..
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship/1599