Many Americans of a certain age remember when the death penalty was one of the most fraught and divisive issues in America. In fact, it was the wedge issue that most defined the presidential election of 1988. Some of the biggest political headlines in the year 2000 were generated by the Republican governor of Illinois deciding to halt all executions. And the last decade has seen controversy over the method of executions with pharmaceutical companies unwilling to supply the chemicals used in lethal injections. But today we may be approaching a new era of the death penalty in America.
Executions have fallen, public interest is waning, and when was the last time you saw the death penalty discussed as a major issue in a political campaign? To help us understand where we’ve been where we are now and where we may be going on the death penalty in America we are fortunate to have Maurice Chammah, a staff writer for the Marshall Project and the author of “Let the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty,” which won the 2019 J. Anthony Lukas Work-In-Progress Book Award.
He recently wrote an article for the NYT titled “The Supreme Court Let The Death Penalty Flourish. Now Americans are Ending It Themselves.” And he’s here to tell us all about it.
