Americans have stuck with grim determination to the idea of the ultimate penalty even as other Western democracies have turned against it. Tsarnaev aside, the tide is turning on capital punishment in the U.S., as previously supportive judges, lawmakers and politicians come out against it.Ĭhange is not coming quickly or easily. The relative few who are killed continue to be selected by a mostly random cull. For the overwhelming majority of condemned prisoners, the final step-that last short march with the strap-down team-will never be taken. Despite extraordinary efforts by the courts and enormous expense to taxpayers, the modern death penalty remains slow, costly and uncertain. The situation is similar in state courts and prisons. Photograph by Lucinda Devlin, from her book The Omega Suites A dozen years have passed since the last one. He is one of more than 60 federal prisoners under sentence of execution in a country where only three federal death sentences have been carried out in the past half-century. Support for capital punishment has sagged in recent years, but it remains strong in a situation like this, where the offense is so outrageous, the process so open, the defense so robust and guilt beyond dispute.Įven so, Tsarnaev is in no danger of imminent death. Justice was done, in the opinion of 70% of those surveyed for a Washington Post–ABC News poll in April. The saga of his crime and punishment began with the shocking bloodbath at the 2013 Boston Marathon, continued through the televised manhunt that paralyzed a major city and culminated in the death sentence handed down by a federal jury on May 15 after a two-phase trial. The case of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev absorbed Americans as no death-penalty drama has in years. Death Penalty Why the era of capital punishment is ending