It’s perhaps fitting that the 50-year anniversary of the modern death penalty falls right before Independence Day, since capital punishment often feels like a uniquely American phenomenon. (Most of our peer countries have abolished it.) In this newsletter, I want to tell you a bit about how we got here as a country, and share some recommendations for other stories on the death penalty, if you want to spend a little more time in the very grim universe of my journalistic beat. Many people are surprised to learn this, but in 1972, the death penalty appeared to be dead in America. In the Supreme Court case of Furman v. Georgia, a narrow majority decided the country’s death penalty system was unconstitutional. As we describe in “The Last 12 Weeks,” some of the justices called out racial disparities and declared the punishment “morally unacceptable.” But the main complaint was that it was “arbitrary,” in the sense that lots of awful crimes happened every year yet who was ultimately executed for them seemed random. One justice even compared it to being struck by lightning. However, the justices also left the door open for the death penalty to come back. By saying the problem was the laws — rather than the death penalty itself — they invited lawmakers to write new legislation that aimed to make capital punishment less arbitrary. State legislators across the country did just that, adding automatic appeals and other tweaks. On July 2, 1976, the Supreme Court looked at the new laws and approved several of them, declaring the death penalty constitutional again. The most important state in that story was Texas, where David Wood would eventually receive a death sentence. The justices approved a law there that was particularly harsh, making it hard for jurors to consider sympathetic information about defendants during sentencing. Many years later, Justice John Paul Stevens would say that approving the Texas death penalty was the only decision in his entire career that he regretted. In my 2021 book “Let the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty,” I get into all the Supreme Court drama from the ’70s and meet the victim families, prosecutors, executioners and judges who helped revive the death penalty — and the defense lawyers, like the ones in our series, who have helped beat it back, from a high of 328 death sentences in 1986 to just 23 last year. In that time, there has also been some great journalism about the death penalty, and if you’d like to read more, I’d suggest the work of Pamela Colloff. She just published a New York Times Magazine story on the current spree of executions under Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. She’s also publishing a new book about one very troubling case called “Catch the Devil.” It was actually Pam who suggested to Greg Wiercioch, David Wood’s lawyer, that he contact me about the case. We’re part of a small club of journalists — along with Keri Blakinger, Ken Armstrong, Chiara Eisner, Jessica Schulberg and Liliana Segura — who share tips and help each other through the emotionally tough parts of this beat. Finally, some music. In addition to being a reporter, I’m also a musician, and I’ve been working on a series at The Marshall Project about songs made behind bars. I think you can learn an awful lot about life on death row by listening to one of these songs. And so I thought I’d close us out here with lyrics from “Live on Death Row,” recorded by Alim Braxton, a North Carolina prisoner who raps under the name Rrome Alone. He captures a lot in three minutes: “I am reportin’ straight from the trenches separated from the angel of death by mere inches where every life hinges on poverty, gender and race and the pay of the attorney defending your case. Eyes stay alert, keep your head low in the shadow of the valley, I’m live on Death Row!”
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