9/11 And The Death Penalty
More on 9/11’s impact: Byron York notes rising support for the death penalty since 9/11:
In a new Gallup poll, 74 percent of those surveyed say they favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder. Just two years ago, in May 2001, support stood at 65 percent, its lowest point in more than two decades.
The latest increase has been slow but steady. In October 2001, 68 percent favored capital punishment. That rose to 72 percent by May 2002, and dipped slightly to 70 percent in October 2002 before rising to 74 percent.…
Why the new support for the death penalty?
It’s possible that Americans have assessed the “innocence” argument and found it wanting. More important, they’ve seen it in action.
For example, could anyone say that former Illinois Gov. George Ryan’s (R.) blanket commutation of death sentences in his state helped the abolitionist cause? Ryan spared the lives of some brutal and indisputably guilty killers and in so doing created so much publicity that the victims’ families felt compelled to speak out in the press. The result was no help for the abolitionists.
Ryan’s blunder surely played a part in the death-penalty turnaround, but by far the most important event has been the arrival of terrorism in America. If you chart the nation’s support for capital punishment, you’ll see it falling in the period before Sept. 11, 2001, and rising afterward.
As capital-punishment opponent Richard Dieter, head of the Death Penalty Information Center, sees it, the terrorist attacks took attention away from the “innocence” movement, which had been gaining momentum before Sept. 11.
“I think what was creating concern about the death penalty was that people were hearing so much about the errors, wrongful convictions and unfairness in the process, and to some extent that’s been muted now with coverage of other issues,” says Dieter. “The problems that plague the death penalty system are still out there, but they’re not on the front page.”
Perhaps. But it seems more likely that the terrorist attacks had a far more profound effect. “After 9-11, the country has come to grips with something that lies behind a good deal of support for the death penalty,” says death-penalty supporter Bill Otis, a former federal prosecutor who is an adjunct professor of law at George Mason University. “And that is that there is actually evil in this world, that there are people out there who will blow you to bits because they hate you, or for amusement, or to advance some bizarre view of the world, and that the only thing that represents proportionate justice in those cases is the death penalty.”