The Crisis in Capital Punishment

Abstract

We are at crisis. For about four years, because of judicial stays necessary to the orderly administration of justice, no human being has been killed by warrant of law in the United States. We have had much time- for. thought on the subject. If we resume the infliction of death by law, we shall have to answer to ourselves, to the future, to the rest of the world, and to whatever or whomever else it may be that judges us, how it came about that we did this after so much time for reflection. Meanwhile, some 600 persons have been condemned to die, and are in the death cells of our capital punishment states. Of course, not all these will be killed, in any event, for it is the policy in some states to delay clemency hearings until all judicial remedies are exhausted. and some of those now under condemnation will be commuted, or be transferred to asylums, or die. But if the protection of the judicial stays be removed, and if no other remedy supervene, it is reasonably certain that within a year a good many times as many people will be killed in the name of law as in any year in recent American history. Although I am aware that much, indeed most, of what I shall have to say cannot be new, and although I know my subject is a most unpleasant one, I dare not put myself in the position of having to explain to my children how it happened that at such a crisis I could find myself honored by being tendered a platform such as this, at a great university such as this, and then not use this opportunity to have my say on this subject.!