Dead Man Walking

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes references to capital punishment.

Shortly before the publication of Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States in 1993, a Gallup poll found 76% of Americans supported capital punishment for a convicted murderer. Thirty years later, another Gallup Poll found that half of Americans believed the death penalty was applied unfairly (although a small subset of that number still supported it under certain circumstances). Dead Man Walking and its film adaptation are important works that helped bring the case against capital punishment into the public consciousness. Her book, however, only marked the beginning of Prejean’s work, and, what is more, the prison-abolition movement extends far beyond any of its prominent spokespeople.

The period immediately following the publication of Dead Man Walking was not encouraging for abolitionists. In 1994, with public support reaching 80% (Prejean believes it was closer to 90% in her native Louisiana; see her 2019 memoir River of Fire), President Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (its chief Senate sponsor was Joe Biden), which vastly expanded the scope of capital crimes under federal law. In 2001, Timothy McVeigh, responsible for the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, was subject to the first federal execution in nearly 40 years, with little public outcry (perhaps due to the horrific nature of his crime, which killed 168 people including 19 children). Yet this proved to be the high-water mark of support since capital punishment was reinstituted in 1976 (after being suspended nationally in 1972).

Several factors have contributed to the relative decline in public support for capital punishment. The 1994 bill marked a reaction to rising crime rates, just as crime rates had begun a precipitous drop that would continue for decades (with a slight and temporary bump during the COVID-19 pandemic). Less crime, with a corresponding drop in death sentences, seemed to refute the idea of the death penalty as a deterrent, creating an opening for several states that had not already abolished capital punishment to do so (such as Iowa, Massachusetts, and Minnesota, as well as New Jersey in 2007, Illinois in 2011, Connecticut in 2012, and Washington in 2018). With the help of groups like the Innocence Project, 46 people were exonerated from death row between 1999 and 2004 with one case (Ron Williamson) inspiring John Grisham’s 2006 nonfiction bestseller The Innocent Man.

After the formation of the European Union in 1992, the entire continent (except Belarus and Russia, non-EU members) abolished capital punishment. This proved especially important, since many of the chemicals needed for lethal injections were produced in Europe and these companies started refusing its shipment. In the 2020s, two further factors helped reduce public support for capital punishment: first, a broader awareness of racial injustice followed in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 and, second, limited chemical supplies led to several executions either going on for hours or failing outright.

Opponents of the death penalty still have a long way to go: Executions continue in 13 states, and there was a blitz of 13 federal executions during the Trump administration, but the overall number of executions and death sentences continues to decline. Nationwide abolition, however, would almost certainly require a Supreme Court ruling, and while the Court has prohibited its use against people with cognitive disabilities (2002), those under 18 (2005), and for non-homicide offenses (2008), the precedent of Gregg v. Georgia (1976) still leaves the basic practice of capital punishment to the states.