'The death penalty, it seems, is just too embedded in America's DNA to go away'

Death penalty protesters demonstrate outside the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on June 29, 2023

(Image credit: Olivier Douliery / AFP via Getty Images)

published 5 February 2024

'The death penalty just won't die'

Robert Gebelhoff in The Washington Post

America's "innovative spirit" is "languishing" in some areas, but not in its execution chambers, says Robert Gebelhoff in The Washington Post. Alabama recently executed Kenneth Eugene Smith with nitrogen gas, a first that came as executions tick up and states struggle to find drugs for lethal injections. We're making "a mockery of the principle that all life is sacred" by "doubling down" on capital punishment, even though most Western democracies abandoned it decades ago as "barbaric."

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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.