Against Capital Punishment: The Anti-Death Penalty Movement in America, 1972-1994

Against Capital Punishment: The Anti-Death Penalty Movement in America, 1972-1994. Herbert H. Haines. New York: Oxford, 1996. $35.00.

Herbert Haines's Against Capital Punishment is more than welcome. It contributes to raising the discussion of the death penalty above the emotion-laden and ill-informed level common to most politicians and media. He addresses an important question-when most of the other governments of the world, except for the very few most repressive, have abolished capital punishment, why is support for the death penalty so strong in the United States? More germane to Haines's study, why has the American anti-death penalty movement been ineffective since it reached its high point when the Supreme Court issued a moratorium on executions in Furman vs. Georgia (1972)?

An historical overview of death penalty...