Lynching's stepchild

The President and his attorney general, who couldn't care less about the rule of law, beat their chests and proclaim themselves to be defenders of the constitution only when it pleases them.  The death penalty is one of those instances.

After nearly two decades, the federal government resumed capital punishment.  Yes, resumed, and in the middle of a pandemic that is also killing people aided by the federal government's willful inaction.  The Supreme Court refused to stop it:

Hours after the Supreme Court rejected a last-minute legal-challenge on a 5-4 vote, the Justice Department put a 47-year-old man to death for his role in the 1996 murder of a family of three, the first federal execution in more than 17 years.

A left-of-center person throughout my life, I have always opposed capital punishment.  But, as a secular liberal, what do I know compared to those god-loving Republicans who favor the death penalty!  I am sure that Jesus said torture and kill those who harmed you, right?

My earliest post on the awful Republican pursuit of the death penalty was in 2011, well before tRump became a darling candidate for the hate-filled Republicans.  I quoted Christopher Hitchens there when linking the religiosity of the country (especially Republicans) and the support for capital punishment:

The reason why the United States is alone among comparable countries in its commitment to doing this is that it is the most religious of those countries. (Take away only China, which is run by a very nervous oligarchy, and the remaining death-penalty states in the world will generally be noticeable as theocratic ones.)

The Jesus-loving, Bible-thumping, pro-life party wants the government to kill.  Whether it is the support for war or the death penalty, these ardent supporters are pro-death.  These proud pro-life people are maniacally pro-killing!

Dahlia Lithwick noted the unfortunate irony that most of the ardent supporters of the death sentence are simultaneously the same ones denouncing the role of government, and their primary reason is that the government can't get any damn thing right:

when you hear Republicans moan about the bureaucratic burdens and failures of government-run education, health care, and disaster-relief systems, doesn't any part of you wonder why they have such boundless confidence in the capital justice system?

They have such remarkable confidence that the government is awesome when it comes to killing people!

There is one more dimension that is exceptional to the US among the advanced liberal democracies that have otherwise done away with capital punishment--the continuing effects in a society that once enslaved human beings.  Capital punishment in the United States is linked with "its history of racially motivated lynchings in the South."

Southern legislatures shifted to capital punishment so that legal and ostensibly unbiased court proceedings could serve the same purpose as vigilante violence: satisfying the lust for revenge.

The Equal Justice Initiative reported on this:

The death penalty in America is a “direct descendant of lynching.” Racial terror lynchings gave way to executions in response to criticism that torturing and killing Black people for cheering audiences was undermining America’s image and moral authority on the world stage.

The reality is that we the people are not in favor of the death penalty; "a majority of Americans say that life imprisonment with no possibility of parole is a better punishment for murder than the death penalty is."

As with the results of the 2016 election, the majority opinion does not count here too :(

Republicans are one of the rare groups in society to indicate a preference for the death penalty over life imprisonment. Political conservatives (51%) are another.
Democrats and political liberals (77%) are two of the subgroups most likely to believe life imprisonment is a better punishment for murder than the death penalty.

There is only one way to get rid of capital punishment--vote against the pro-death Republican candidates in November 2020, and throw tRump and his toadies out of power.