as "the greatest civilizing achievement of the nineteenth century" (Clark 329). In the eighteenth century in England, most capital offenses concerned crimes against property, but by the 1860s, only four crimes--murder, piracy, treason, and arson--carried the death penalty ("Capital" 135). By the late twentieth century, capital punishment had been abolished in all industrialized countries except the United States.
American capital punishment was banned from 1972 to 1976, based on a Supreme Court majority ruling that declared unconstitutional because cruel and unusual under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments state laws for sentencing capital defendants (Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238). Capital punishment was reinstated in 1976, based on Supreme Court majority rulings on constitutional ity of laws rewritten to conform to Furman. But the issue is far from settled. Advocates and opponents of capital punishment continue their debate and efforts to assure that public policy conforms with their views.
Mere emotional or even moral attachment to the idea that a criminal ought to get his or her just deserts does not rise to the level of rational argument. Credible defense of the death penalty cannot be mounted without acknowledging compelling arguments against it. And indeed, contemporary American history provides ample evidence and ammunition for opponents of capital punishment to make a reasoned case for their views. Two issues predominate in the U.S.: the question of fairness of application of the death penalty, which is bound up with the persistent question of racism in the American judicial system more generally, and the question of accuracy, or the possibility of executing an innocent person.
All of these factors appear to have combined in the case of Leonel Herrera, executed by lethal injection in Texas in 1993, "even though another man confessed to the murder. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that, with his court appeals exhausted,...