The US re-legalized the death penalty 50 years ago. Is it working as intended?

The Marshall Project analyzed over 9,000 death sentences handed down since states brought the punishment back Fifty years ago, Americans set out on a polarizing mission: to find a just and fair way to punish the worst-of-the-worst crimes by execution. In some ways, this was a surprising choice. In 1972, a narrow majority of the US supreme court had scrapped the country’s entire death penalty system, calling it “morally unacceptable”, “racially discriminatory” and “arbitrary”. It seemed possib...

By Maurice Chammah and Jill Castellano for the Marshall Project