Overview

"The United States stands alone as the only Western democracy that still practices capital punishment. Yet the American death penalty has gone into noticeable decline, with annual death sentences and executions dwindling steadily in recent years. In Stay of Execution, Charles Lane offers a fresh analysis of this unexpected trend and its moral and political implications. Countering conventional wisdom that attributes the death penalty's decline to public rejection of the ""ultimate sanction,"" he shows that it is instead related to the ebbing of violent crime itself. The death penalty is not only more popular than critics claim; it is also less flawed by wrongful executions or racial bias. Lane argues that capital punishment should be preserved, while proposing major reforms to address its real inequities and inconsistencies."

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9781442203785

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The perennial death-penalty debate is crowded with partisans and absolutists twisting facts and data to reach ideologically driven conclusions. Now comes Charles Lane with a balanced, reasoned, factually and statistically meticulous analysis that dismantles distortions by both sides and by various courts. Lane will disappoint abolitionists by showing support for the death penalty among Americans to be so strong, and with justification, as to make Euro-style abolition unlikely and unwise. He also demonstrates that the undoubted risk of executing innocents has been exaggerated and the racism that once infected death-sentencing so deeply has diminished. Lane will disappoint death penalty enthusiasts by showing that indiscriminate classification of robbery-killings and most other murders as capital crimes brings inconsistent application within and between states, injustices, and endless delays, with no clear proof that the penalty deters (or that it does not deter) crime. Lane ends with a promising proposal to limit the penalty to the worst of the worst, such as multiple and serial murderers, those using especially monstrous methods, and imprisoned terrorists who orchestrate hostage-takings and killings from prison.--Stuart Taylor, Jr., contributing editor to Newsweek and National Journal

This book is everything the debate over the American death penalty is not: thoughtful, morally serious, and careful with facts. Lane's book forced me, an ardent foe of capital punishment, to rethink some arguments I had once found persuasive. Whatever your views on the subject, this brief, engagingly-argued volume will challenge them. It should be required reading for everyone interested in this difficult subject.--Ben Wittes

Author Information

Charles Lane is an editorial writer and member of the editorial board at the Washington Post. He has been a correspondent at Newsweek and editor and senior editor at the New Republic.

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