Justice William O. Douglas summed up what he thought was wrong with the death penalty in Furman v. Georgia (1972): A law that stated that anyone making more than fifty thousand dollars a year would be exempt from the death penalty would plainly fall, as would a law that in terms said that blacks, those who never went beyond the fifth grade in school, those who made less than three thousand dollars a year, or those who were unpopular or unstable should be the only people executed. A law which in the overall view reaches that result in practice has no more sanctity than a law which in terms provides the same.

Source: Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972). Crime and Public Opinion

A Political Issue.

Public concern about crime grew in the late 1960s. In 1968 Richard Nixon and...