enalty, thereby becoming the first American jurisdiction which had twice voted to end the death penalty. During this period, the federal government, after much debate in Congress, did reduce its dozens of capital crimes to three: murder, treason, and rape. However, none of these crimes had mandatory death sentences. Colorado abolished the death penalty for a few years, but reinstated under the threat of mob rule. In that state, public dissatisfaction with mere imprisonment twice resulted in lynchings during the abolition years.
Between the peak of the Progressive Era and the years when women won the right to vote and Prohibition started, no less than eight states--Kansas, Minnesota, Washington, Oregon, North and South Dakota, Tennessee, and Arizona--abolished the death penalty for murder and for most other crimes. In only a few states did the reform last, however. By 1921, Tennessee, Arizona, Washington, Oregon, and Missouri had reinstated it. During the Prohibition Era, when law enforcement often verged on total collapse, the abolitionists were nearly stopped in several states. Had it not been for the persuasive arguments of Clarence Darrow, the renown attorney, of Lewis E. Lawes, the famous warden of Sing Sing Prison, and the organization in 1927 of the American League to Abolish Capital Punishment, the lawless era of the 1920s might have seen the death penalty reintroduced in every state in the Union.
During this period in England, the abolition movement remained more popular than it did in the United States. Primarily through the efforts of Roy Calvert, a Select Committee of the House of Commons studied the issue and published a scholarly report in 1931. Although the report recommended an experimental period of five years without the death penalty, the government did not take any action on this issue. Immediately after the end of World War II, while the Labor Party controlled the government, several Labor M.P.s...