Anti-death penalty zealot Linda Greenhouse has a piece up in the NYT gushing over the Connecticut Supreme Court's 4-3 decision retrospectively abolishing the death penalty, even though the state legislature -- a very liberal legislature -- abolished it only prospectively, and even though that distinction was crucial to getting an abolition bill passed at all, as Kent has noted. The gist of Ms. Greenhouse's article is that the death penalty is on the way out the door, and sooner or later, the fabled "national conversation" about its defects will take us to the Higher Ground that Ms. Greenhouse and her Manhattan pals occupy.
There is much to say about the Greenhouse work, but for now I want to mention only two things to point out how slanted, if not simply dishonest, it is.
First, the big opportunity for a major strike against the death penalty came, not in Connecticut, but, less than eight weeks ago, in the United States Supreme Court's Glossip case. Abolitionists were giddy with anticipation. Liberal blogs were all over themselves anticipating a "big decision."
Didn't happen. The opposite happened. A SCOTUS majority, with Justice Kennedy on board with every word, declared that "it is settled that capital punishment is constitutional."
But that Glossip was ever decided cannot be found in the Greenhouse piece until nicely down the page, in its tenth paragraph, and the word "Glossip" does not appear until after that. This is in an article about the future of the American death penalty, mind you.
Second, Ms. Greenhouse notes (correctly) that the number of
executions in the United States has been declining (slightly) over the
last few years. There were 37 in 2008; a momentary increase to 46 in
2011 (with the petering out of Baze challenges), then a slow drop to 35
last year. There have been 19 so far this year. If present trends
hold, there will be 30 to the low 30's, although that could increase in a
minor way in Glossip's aftermath.
How does Ms.
Greenhouse characterize this fact? "It's no exaggeration to say that
there is a widespread de facto moratorium in place, even in most of the
31 states that still have the death penalty on their books."
In
a sense, I am compelled to agree with Ms. Greenhouse. It is "no
exaggeration." It is a prevarication. Even now, with all the
obstructionism going on that has zip to do with either guilt or
innocence, or the hideousness of the crime, an execution every 12 days
is no sane person's (and certainly no abolitionist's) version of a
"moratorium."
Ms. Greenhouse certainly knows this. She also certainly knows what an actual moratorium looks like, that having been between 1967 and January of 1977, when there was
a moratorium (followed, as she also certainly knows, not by abolition
but by a massive resumption of executions, now at over 1400 in the last
38 years).
Still, when you're writing in the
NYT with a slippery agenda to sell, words get to mean whatever you want
them to mean, cf., "exonerated."
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