“Law students who take first-year criminal law from 2010 on, will learn that smart lawyers and judges — the ones whose work they read every day — have said that the death penalty in the United States is a moral and practical failure.”
via www.nytimes.com
The American Law Institute, the group that created the legal and philosophical framework to justify the death penalty, has given up their project— after fifty years of vigorous defense.
The whole organization just disbanded, essentially saying, "It ain't working. We give up."
It's ironic that professional legal world is moving away from capital punishment as fast as they can pass the barf bag, while the popular media and culture is evermore infatuated with vigilante justice— "hang-em high" answers to every criminal and social dilemma.
There aren't going to be a lot of credible judges and lawyers who want to do the dirty work of bloodthirsty political campaigners, if this is where we're heading... Do I dare hope that's true?
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