The Fall and Rise of the Death Penalty [TEASER]

I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture of the Bhagavad Gita, Now I am become death,

the destroyer of worlds.

Hey everyone, this is Leon from Fiasco and Prologue Projects.

On this premium episode of 5-4, Peter, Rhiannon, and Michael are talking about the death penalty.

Death sentences have been handed down since the founding of the country, and they have always disproportionately affected the poor, people of color, and people without power.

But there was a trend away from the death penalty in the 20th century, and even a brief moment when the court put a moratorium on its use.

But as the composition of the court changed and moved to the right, a new crop of justices redefined cruel and unusual punishment to not include the death penalty.

This is 5-4, a podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks.

Welcome to 5-4, where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court cases that have suffocated our rights, like Michael is suffocating in his car.

I'm Peter.

I'm here with Rhiannon.

Hey, we're just not going to

explain it.

No.

No,

I was going to.

And live from his car.

Yeah, that's right.

Michael.

Hey, everybody.

I'm in my nice new car.

Nice.

My EV.

Tell them about your new Rolls-Royce.

Not in Rolls-Royce.

Podcast Money Rolls-Royce.

Subaru.

My new Subaru.

But

yeah, it's pretty nice.

My computer is actually plugged in.

I'm running off the

car.

And it is a fully EV car, listeners, so Michael will not slowly die.

He won't actually suffocate over the course of this episode.

Zero emissions.

Yeah.

Emissions free.

I'm just sorry.

I'm just picturing how grim it would be if like we didn't really think about it.

And then Michael just slowly passes out.

You guys are like frantically trying to remember my address.

Call Elena.

Right.

Like, what do we do?

Today, we are talking about the fall and rise of the death penalty.

The death penalty, of course, a long-standing tradition.

in this country.

Yeah.

And perhaps no part of it more interesting than the brief period in the 1970s when the Supreme Court made it functionally illegal.

From 1972 to 1976, there was a moratorium on death penalties across the nation.

It was put in place by the court and it was rescinded by the court.

We're going to talk about the history of the death penalty, the moratorium, what happened after,

and what we think it says about our criminal punishment system and the law in general.

So, Rhea, take us on a journey, a journey through the history of the death penalty.

Yeah, a journey of executions.

Sad.

Yeah, it's a long history, but I think we should just try to focus mostly on America, right?

The U.S.

history of the death penalty.

So, European settlers brought the death penalty with them from Europe, and all of the American colonies had the death penalty.

In fact, the first recorded execution in the colonies was in 1608 when Captain George Kendall was executed in Jamestown for being a spy to Spain.

And different crimes could be punished by execution depending on what colony you were in, but the death penalty is absolutely used, and death as punishment for people who are enslaved is certainly widespread just before and around the time of the founding.

We'll talk more about this later, this meaning the death penalty for people who are enslaved, and then even after the Civil War, the use of race in the death penalty.

But right now, maybe just some more historical benchmarks and events, the legal landscape, so to speak.

So, Britain had the death penalty for many, many crimes through the 1700s.

The U.S.

brought that over too.

Throughout the Enlightenment, many prominent European and then later early American thinkers began to dissent and express moral concerns about the death penalty.

You know, like, does human morality, liberty, progress, a quote-unquote civilized society, etc., do those all allow for the death penalty, right?

So there is opposition to the death penalty in the United States.

There has been since the United States was created.

Thomas Jefferson, in fact, introduced a bill to revise Virginia's death penalty laws in 1779 so that the death penalty could only be used for murder and treason.

That bill was defeated by just one vote.

Sorry, I don't, I just think it's, I just think it's funny that there's always like a carve out for treason in these situations.

Like, come on.

I don't know.

Treason to me is just so abstract.

Yes.

Like everyone who was at January 6th and participated in storming the Capitol, you can make a reasonable case that they were participating

in a treasonous campaign.

Right.

And I feel like if it happened in like 1805, they wouldn't have asked a ton of questions, right?

They would have racked them up.

Yeah.

You offended my nation state.

You die.

Right.

Right.

I don't know.

It's not inherently funny.

It's just sort of bizarre to me that it's like being like killing another human being and being mean to the country are like in the same category to Thomas Jefferson.

Right, exactly.

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