Anti–Death Penalty Movement

The anti–death penalty movement, also called the abolitionist movement or the new abolitionist movement, seeks to end capital punishment. The movement's members view capital punishment as a human rights violation, which is frequently associated with other social justice issues, like racism, classism, and inadequate judicial processes. While the anti–death penalty movement itself works toward the abolition of capital punishment, its members approach and argue the issue from a wide variety of viewpoints. Various arguments made against the death penalty include its religious and humanistic immorality, its detrimental effect on victims' family members, its likelihood of executing an innocent person, its arbitrary and often racist or classist application, its ineffectiveness as a deterrent, and its high financial cost. Even though the anti–death penalty movement as a whole aims to abolish the use of the death penalty throughout the world, most of the recent efforts against capital punishment have been centered on the United States, one of the last democratic countries to still execute its citizens.

The anti–death penalty movement in America has its roots in English opposition to the death penalty, which was documented as early as the 1640s, but the movement has existed on American soil, in one form or another, since the 1700s. Initially, many individuals only opposed capital punishment as a sentence for property crimes like theft, but by the 1780s, abolitionists began to protest the use of the death penalty as a response to any crime, including murder. From this point on, Herbert H. Haines describes organized resistance to the death penalty in America as cyclical, with four significant periods of protest and condemnation: the 1830s and 1840s, the 1890s to the beginning of World War I, the mid-1950s and 1960s, and the late 1970s to the present day. While the early era of the 1830s and 1840s—frequently called the anti-gallows movement—accomplished the goal of having executions take place behind prison walls rather than in town squares or courtyards, the anti–death penalty movements of later eras have worked toward the complete abolition of capital punishment.

In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court's 1972 ruling in Furman v. Georgia, which struck down all existing capital statutes in America as violations of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution, was initially hailed as just such a victory for the anti–death penalty movement, but the Supreme Court's ruling [Page 149]only applied to the capital statutes in effect at that time. Thus, in response to the justices' concerns, voiced in their Furman v. Georgia decision, about the random and, therefore, unconstitutional application of the death penalty, many states adopted new capital sentencing statutes designed to make the sentencing phases of capital trials less arbitrary and discriminatory. In 1976 in the Gregg v. Georgia decision, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the new death penalty statutes, and executions became legal again in the United States.

Since the return of American capital punishment in 1976, the anti–death penalty movement has included a diverse array of members, both from the United States and from other countries. Abolitionist leaders have included activists, attorneys, law enforcement personnel, religious leaders, family members of death row inmates, family members of murder victims, and exonerated death row inmates. Some of these abolitionists work in organizations—such as the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Citizens United for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, and Journey of Hope: From Violence to Healing—that consider the abolishment of the death penalty as their primary goal. Other active anti–death penalty organizations, such as Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the NAACP's Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc., oppose the death penalty as one of many human rights violations that they are trying to end. Moreover, members of both types of organizations employ different strategies in their attempts to end capital punishment, including lobbying legislators, filing petitions in the court systems, educating the public about the issue, and engaging in acts of protest and civil disobedience.

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