Amazing times for the death penalty

For anyone categorically opposed to the death penalty, the past week has to be a cause for celebration.  As DPIC is now spotlighting on its home page, “seven executions in three states were stayed for various reasons between January 19 and the 25th.”   In addition, some recent posts at Capital Defense Weekly and Ohio Death Penalty Information report on developments I could not have imagined even six months ago.  Here are some notable headlines:

• NC – stays & state announces it won’t appeal
• Bills introduced in Maryland and South Dakota would replace death penalty with life w/o parole
• Maryland governor indicates support for death penalty repeal legislation
• Cleveland Plain Dealer calls for Ohio death penalty study / lauds Strickland for execution delays

I am becoming more and more confident about the soundness of my decision not to work on a Death Penalty casebook.  It seems that, perhaps except in Texas and maybe a few other states, the death penalty really could become a matter of legal history.  (Then again, that’s how things must have looked in the late 1960s before Furman and the state backlash produced our modern death penalty era.)