It would be tempting to conclude from this litany, which is drawn from an annual report by the Death Penalty Information Center, that capital punishment is being reserved for the most horrific crimes committed by the most incorrigible offenders. The death penalty is not and has never been about the severity of any given crime. This page has long opposed the death penalty, and would continue to even if the penalty’s application were completely free of bias and error. Last summer, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg suggested that the death penalty would eventually end with a whimper. “We may see an end to capital punishment by attrition as there are fewer and fewer executions.”That’s a dispiriting take.

Source: New York Times January 01, 2018 00:45 UTC