The country as a whole continues to support capital punishment by close to 2-to-1. It's extremely unlikely that the citizens of Nebraska support it less than the national average; if anything, in a conservative and Republican state, support is likely to be considerably higher.
But this week, Nebraska's unicameral legislature abolished capital punishment in the state. Why?
I think there are several reasons. Each deserves more discussion than I give here, but I'm going to run through them quickly while the story is still fresh. I do this with all the modesty due from someone who lives on the East Coast, a goodly distance from the Cornhusker State.
1. Complacency. One important way in which to view the death penalty is as part of the answer to a problem -- murder.
When the problem wanes, enthusiasm for the remedy also will wane, and few things have waned in Nebraska as much as the murder rate (just as it has waned in the United States as a whole).
The national murder rate is down by more than half from what it was a generation ago, and in Nebraska, it's only two-thirds of what it is in the country (to wit, 3.1 per 100,000 population). The determination we have shown in taking down crime is becoming a victim of its own success. Complacency is endemic in human life.
2. Isolation. Most of the murders in Nebraska occur in its cities, Omaha and (to a lesser extent) Lincoln. They occupy a tiny percentage of the state's land area. My guess is that, to the great majority of the state's legislators, talking about "murder in Nebraska" must feel like talking about "murder in Paraguay." It's just not something that has any effect in their districts.
3. Desuetude. One of my rules for keeping the closet clean, sort of, is to give away suits I haven't worn in 15 years. When things don't get used, they tend to be put to one side in one way or another.
That very likely accounts for part of the reason for the legislature's action. Nebraska has executed a grand total of three killers in the last 50 years, the most recent being when Al Gore was Vice President.
When killers don't get executed, the mechanisms for bringing about their execution -- no matter their merit -- become like yesterday's fashions. See also, Stinneford, Death, Desuetude and Original Meaning.
4. Shrewd, and Sleazy, Tactics by Opponents. Abolitionists have all but given up arguing that some killers don't deserve death -- which, in wake of grotesque episodes like the Boston Marathon child-shredding murder, is just as well for them. Instead, they have shifted ground to appeal to three growing trends in popular thinking, one widespread and two narrow but potent.
One of these is growing distrust of government's ability to do anything right. This is a very widely shared feeling. Trust in government is one-third of what it was when Eisenhower was President. This is an ominous trend, and worrisome, not just for the death penalty, but for all law enforcement.
Another is pro-life sentiment among evangelical Christians -- the one type of Christianity with a growing number of adherents. There is a belief among dedicated Christians that no one is beyond God's redemption, and that every life is sacred no matter what. I am at something of a loss to understand why God lacks the power to redeem a murderer in the years his case takes to reach finality, or why a full-term fetus without a will in anything like the normal sense can be viewed as cosmologically identical to a dead-eyed Mafia enforcer, but I am merely describing here, not defending.
A third is the cost argument, put forward with equal measures of assurance and thoughtlessness by such people as my friend Grover Norquist (sorry, Grover). It seems not to occur to these fiscal conservatives either a) that insuring justice is a primary function of even the smallest of sovereign governments, b) that the way to reduce the costs for X (where X has competing virtues) is to discipline X rather than eliminate it, or c) that eliminating the death penalty will have its own costs, financial and otherwise, in (to take one of numerous examples) the litigation storm that will now be undertaken, by the same crowd, and using the same Soros, etc. money, against LWOP. Indeed, the war against LWOP is already underway.
Once you start caving in, the other side smells blood, which brings me to my next point.
5. Cowardice. Proponents of the death penalty are increasingly willing to be put on the defensive. They are far less forthright than they ought to be about advancing the cause for which they speak, that being justice without apology.
In a culture now drowning in phony "compassion," consumed by anyone-and-everyone's overwrought "sensitivity," and falling all over itself to dumb down standards in everything from education to construction to criminal law, retentionists have been cowed. Increasingly -- or so it seems to me -- they are buffeted by the PR whirlwind of abolitionism, in which the only thing that puts a person on death row is his race, and innocents are executed -- by haphazard methods amounting to torture -- every other week.
Retentionists need to get ahold. Much of the case against against the death penalty is dishonest (e.g., all of the above), there's no other way to put it. Much of the rest of it appeals to soft thinking even where not directly deceitful.
The great majority favoring the death penalty needs to understand this and speak with the moral confidence their position assumes and, in truth, possesses.
Now would not be too early to start.
I would add passion.
The anti-DP movement is much more passionate about their cause than the pro-DP crowd.
Even if the later outnumber the former, their enthusiasm for their cause appears to me to be muted and waning compared to their counterparts.
I would also add the media-effect.
The so-called mainstream media has jumped on the anti-DP bandwagon.
Everyday there is another story about a wrongly accused/convicted person and bad cops and prosecutors. This narrative has not only encouraged the anti-DP movement to double down on their efforts, but has blunted the voices of those who consider themselves pro-DP.
Rightly or wrongly, I believe that the DP (like the prohibition on SSM) is on borrowed time.
I agree with everything except your last sentence. As is often the case with me, I like to publish the heart of what I'm thinking while it's still in the news cycle.
My analysis was thus incomplete, and I think you've nailed it in saying that abolitionist passion exceeds ours, and that the media are right there with them, handing them the bullhorn while our side gets muted.
The reason I'm more optimistic than some on our side goes back to basics: Reality counts, and the reality that shows up on your TV screen and your computer screen counts.
When I saw the blood coating the street in Boston, and the people being carted away with an arm or a leg missing, or half their face blown off; and when I heard that an eight year-old had been killed by mutilation, it reminded me of why the death penalty stays with us.
The oldest adage in criminal law is, "let the punishment fit the crime." The great majority of our people know that a jail term, no matter what its length, does not fit a crime like that. They also know that it won't be the last, or the worst, we'll see.
I agree with Bill, regarding the DP being here to stay.
It is a huge sign of strength, not weakness, that in a time of historically low violent crime that the abolitionist movement has not been able to get nationwide DP support under 60% and in the most DP hostile environment in the country the Feds were able to get a death sentence for Tsarnaev.
It is somewhat cyclical. When crime is low and on the back burner of national consciousness, we start to become feckless and roll back the same policies that made us safer to begin with. Over time the crime rate rises again, people get slapped with reality, and the people of this country find that "passion" for tough on crime policies (including the DP) again. Unfortunately, it takes a generation and a bunch of unnecessary pain in the form of crime victims to get back there.
I see Baltimore and NYC as small scale examples of this.