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Patterns in Capital Punishment

NCJ Number
114198
Journal
California Law Review Volume: 75 Issue: 6 Dated: (December 1987) Pages: 2165-2185
Author(s)
W S White
Date Published
1987
Length
21 pages
Annotation
This review of 'Capital Punishment and the American Agenda' (Zimring and Hawkins, 1987) critiques the book in the areas of patterns in capital punishment and the discriminatory application of capital punishment.
Abstract
The book examines why the death penalty continues to exist in the United States and identifies some methods and institutions that might achieve its abolition. The authors' most valuable contribution to the death penalty debate is their identification and analysis of patterns of capital punishment in the United States and abroad. In identifying patterns of capital punishment in the world, they note that the United States is the only Western industrial nation that has capital punishment and that countries most actively pursuing the death penalty are politically repressive. By the authors' logic, such patterns suggest that the United States will soon abolish the death penalty. This logic fails to consider unique factors in the United States which continue to foster the death penalty. Regarding patterns of capital punishment in the United States, the book's data indicate intense support for executions in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, but the authors' reasoning does not preclude other States' generating a pro-execution sentiment that will increase the frequency of executions. Although the authors provide some justification for believing the U.S. Supreme Court may lead an abolition of the death penalty, its recent decisions indicate a reluctance to take any action that will prevent the States from executing capital defendants. In examining criteria for selecting those offenders who will be executed, the authors would have done better to focus less on whether statutes provide intelligible criteria for selecting the most heinous offenders and more on whether a meaningful basis exists for distinguishing the defendants who receive the death penalty from those who do not. The book erred in not making the racially discriminatory application of capital punishment a more central issue, since equal protection and fundamental fairness are likely to be the most compelling arguments for abolition. 92 footnotes.