Part Five: Capital Punishment

In 1972, the Supreme Court struck down a set of convictions in Texas and Georgia, arguing that statutes that allowed for the death penalty violated the Cruel and Unusual Punishment clause in the Eighth Amendment. In 1976, they reversed that decision after 35 states rewrote their death penalty statutes. Since then almost 1,500 people have been executed in the United States. Once again, Meg Mott, Professor of Politics at Marlboro College considers arguments on both sides of the issue as well as the cognitive dissonance each exerts on the other.