Good on New Mexico!
Congratulations and thank you to the state of New Mexico, which has become the 15th state to abolish the death penalty. Montana may be next.
Thanks to DNA exonerations the number of people against the death penalty continues to grow. The SCOTUS effectively suspended the death penalty in 1972, finding its application arbitrary and therefore cruel and unusual. State legislatures rewrote their laws to once again make the penalty possible. Now, those same legislatures are deciding no amount of tinkering is going to create a system they can live with. While it’s true that these legislatures could return someday in the future and reinstate the death penalty, the current trend is headed the other way and thank god for that.
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Thanks to DNA exonerations the number of people against the death penalty continues to grow. The SCOTUS effectively suspended the death penalty in 1972, finding its application arbitrary and therefore cruel and unusual. State legislatures rewrote their laws to once again make the penalty possible. Now, those same legislatures are deciding no amount of tinkering is going to create a system they can live with. While it’s true that these legislatures could return someday in the future and reinstate the death penalty, the current trend is headed the other way and thank god for that.
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March 20th, 2009 at 9:45 am
It’s a bold move. And timely since DNA evidence is exhonerating more and more wrongly convicted people.