a duty that was performed by the people and the community (Ferrall 299). Paul Lund describes these executions as typically attended by large, solemn crowds who were treated to a religious and political ritual intended to awe them and confirm their condemnation of crime (122). In these early days, the justifications for capital punishment were deterrence, retribution and encouragement of repentance (Ferrall 299) and Lund found no evidence in the research of any principled opposition to capital punishment during this period (122).
Following the colonial era, the number of offenses that were punishable by death declined when the first prisons were built in the early nineteenth century. During this period, however, opponents of capital punishment began to speak out (Lund 122). Lund attributed this newly-vocal opposition to the spread of ideas associated with the Enlightenment, and he argues that these ideas continue to form the basis of opposition arguments to capital punishment today. Essentially, those who opposed capital punishment then and those who do so now, do so based on philosophical, moral and religious grounds.
In the United States, the number of executions peaked in the 1930s and decreased in the following decades (Ferrall 299), eventually reaching a total of no executio
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