'While it remains accurate to say that the vast majority of the American public supports the death penalty, at least under some circumstances, it is also true that support for the death penalty is highly conditional'. Critically analyse the political and social arguments that have led to fluctuating support for capital punishment. Shaun Bendle - AM-232 In the U.S., debate continues to rage over the use of capital punishment. Since the end of the moratorium which was implemented following the case of Furman v. Georgia (1972) and overturned by Gregg v. Georgia (1976), support for the death penalty has been highly conditional upon specific social, political, racial and cultural debates. The modern debate in the U.S. has taken a greater focus on the advancement in technology which has led to an increased number of DNA exonerations. Additionally, widely reported cases of the botched executions of individuals, such as Clayton Locket in 2015, has brought renewed pressure on the institution of capital punishment in the U.S. While the Supreme Court has not ruled the death penalty to be unconstitutional over these issues, the dissenting opinion of Justice Breyer in Glossip v. Gross (2015) did bring this into question, taking issue with the reliability of capital punishment, the arbitrary nature of sentencing, and the “undermining” of its “penological purpose” due to the long delays between sentencing and execution. 1 Even so, the fluctuating nature of support for capital punishment can be attributed not only to particularly high profile and shocking crimes, which can generate a great deal of support for capital 1 Death Penalty Information Center, ‘Two Supreme Court Justices Chronicle Death Penalty Flaws in Glossip Dissent’, 2016 <http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/node/6184> [accessed 27 April 2016].
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