The concept behind AMERICA WITHOUT THE DEATH PENALTY; STATES LEADING THE WAY is that case studies of the twelve states that do not impose capital punishment will "provide some insight into furthering the abolition of the death penalty throughout the United States" (p. 207). Such tendentiousness
doesn't do much for reader confidence in the objectivity of this book. I suppose it is better that authors confess their biases, although the content of the work usually speaks for itself. Notwithstanding the naked policy agenda, this book has some insights to offer.

Despite the centralizing trends of the last four decades, the administration of criminal law in this country remains the province of state government. Thus, while most of America maintains the death penalty for a narrow set of crimes, there are a dozen holdout states, mainly in the northeast and north central portions of the country. Actually, from a practical perspective, the list of states without capital punishment is a bit longer than twelve, because states like New Hampshire, New Jersey
and New York haven't executed anyone in decades and don't seem likely to. In principle, one might have expanded the case studies to include the nominal
death penalty states, but as matters stand, the nine states examined in AMERICA WITHOUT THE DEATH PENALTY were quite enough to extract generalizations about the supports for abolition. The book consists of nine full-length case studies. The remaining three abolitionist states receive summary treatment in a single chapter on the ground that their judiciaries, rather than the legislatures, were responsible for the abolition. Indeed, I could have done with fewer case studies, given the redundancies among the north central states. Maybe my eastern bias is showing, but Iowa, Wisconsin, North Dakota and Minnesota don't seem so different from one another that one needs to wade through each state's anti-death penalty history.

What then, according to the four sociologists who wrote this book, are the factors associated with abolition? Before discussing their treatment of the most influential variables, race and public opinion, I note that one factor they rule out is economic downturn. "In themselves," the writers conclude, "economic factors do little to explain death penalty abolition in the United States" (p. 211). I agree. The authors might have pointed out that the 20th century peak for executions in the U. S. occurred during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

In explaining abolition in the north central states, the authors claim that the "near-total annihilation of Native Americans" eliminated a target population

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for executions, thereby diminishing the popularity of the death penalty in that region (p. 208). By contrast, we are told, attempts by southern whites to economically and politically disenfranchise blacks explain the continuing popularity of the death penalty in that locale. This is an inaccurate and outdated generalization. As regards the Indians, the authors offer scant evidence of use of the death penalty against them. They do report on the mass execution of 38 Sioux in Minnesota in 1862-but
federal authorities carried that out. According to that same chapter, not one Native American was executed by the state (p. 80).

The past treatment of blacks in the South is well known and is not discussed in this book, but the argument that today's death penalty is explained by racism is a mere unproven assumption. The authors do not mention that nowadays, even in the South, most death sentences and executions are imposed on whites. At year end 2000, of 3,593 prisoners under sentence of death, 55 percent were white, 43 percent were black, and 11 percent were Hispanic. (U. S. Dept. of Justice 2001b). Of the 683 executions from 1977 through 2000, 377 (55 percent) were of whites, 246 (36 percent) were of blacks, 49 (7 percent) were of Hispanics, and 11 (2 percent) were of all other races (U. S. Dept. of Justice 2001a). Nor can anyone reasonably claim, without at least seeking to defend the proposition, that blacks in the contemporary South are politically disenfranchised.

The authors also see race as a factor in a different sense. Population diversity, they say, is associated with executions because homogeneous populations are less inclined to put to death one of their own (p. 217). Alaska, Hawaii and Michigan are exceptions, for reasons we will come to momentarily. There may, however, be a more complex relationship between race, violent crime and support for the death penalty than the authors acknowledge. Although blacks make up twelve percent of the U. S. population, the black homicide rate is seven to nine times that of whites and they commit more than half the homicides in the U. S. (U. S. Dept. of
Justice 2001b) Consequently, a large black population in a state may result in a high murder rate, which, by feeding perceptions of high violent crime, may lead to public support for the death penalty. Under this theory, however, it isn't diversity that promotes capital punishment; it is violent crime and its impact on public opinion.

The limitations of the diversity hypothesis are also borne out by the chapters on Alaska and Hawaii, the most interesting case studies in the book. In both states, large "native" populations, apparently recalling historically racist applications of the death penalty, are the very reason (or at least a principle reason) for abolition (pp. 144, 163). In both states, however, the nonwhite populations are larger and more politically powerful than in the rest of the United States.

Perhaps a two-part diversity theory needs to be developed. States without influential racial/ethnic minorities who are associated with violent crime are more likely to implement a death penalty. States with large, influential racial/ethnic groups who are opposed to the death penalty are better candidates for abolition.

Public opinion is a problem for these authors, as it is for all death penalty opponents. Most chapters of this book concede strong public support for the death penalty even in abolitionist states, e.g., Alaska, 75 percent (p. 139); Wisconsin, thanks in part to Jeffrey Dahmer, 84 percent

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(p. 38). How then can abolition be explained? AMERICA WITHOUT THE DEATH PENALTY suggests that public support is soft--"abstractly supportive butpractically opposed" (p. 213). However, there is little proof for this, and no acknowledgement of the undemocratic nature of abolitionism. Obviously, when it comes to the death penalty, state elites are very effective at--to use James Madison's phrase--refining and enlarging the public view.

This book does a good job detailing how state politicians, newspapers and church groups have successfully bottled up numerous proposals to reinstate the death penalty. See, for example, the chapter on West Virginia, in which legislative committee chairs "used their power to effectively block consideration of nearly all death penalty bills" (p. 203). Newspapers in particular are singled out for their inordinate impact on death penalty legislation, both through coverage of especially brutal murders and (usually anti-execution) editorials (p. 216). However, the authors may have been unduly influenced by their research methodology here. They relied heavily on newspaper accounts for a great deal of their information.

Also related to public opinion is the "cultural tradition" of a state, which Galliher, et al. measure by the history of the use of capital punishment (p. 209). This hypothesis suggests that the more a state executes its criminals, or did so in the past, the more likely it will continue to do so. The southern pro-death penalty tradition seems to bear this out, as does the abolitionist history of New England.

Michigan presents an interesting case. It was the first state to abolish (1847) and had few executions even before that date (p. 11). On the other hand, since World War Two, it has had high levels of violent crime, a sizeable black population, and an influx of poor whites from the South, who might have been expected to bring with them support for executions (pp. 12-13). Yet it continues to resist reinstatement. Unexpectedly, the author of this chapter concludes that the state's "legislative tradition does not adequately explain the Michigan situation," instead attributing continued resistance to Michigan elites (pp. 27-28). West Virginia presents
another anomaly for the cultural tradition hypothesis, having abolished despite a fairly high number of executions in its past (p. 191).

AMERICA WITHOUT THE DEATH PENALTY offers an appealing concept imperfectly executed--if you'll forgive the allusion. As already noted, many of the
case studies, especially of the north central states, are repetitive; they should have been consolidated, like the judicial abolitionists, into one chapter.

The writing, from chapter to chapter, is uneven; some parts of the book read like a graduate student term paper. There are a few bloopers, such as the claim that 19th and early 20th century Western European immigrants "brought with them socialist politics, a mistrust of government, and a familiarity with the relationship between totalitarian government and capital punishment" (p. 113), or the statement that anti-death penalty politicians "tend to be inhumane in their speech" (p. 216). There are gratuitous ideologically charged assertions ("institutionalized racism has spread throughout America") (p. 215), and occasional gobbledygook ("The
salience of the data concerning the execution of innocent persons and the statistics on racial and economic bias of capital punishment

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was potentially heightened by Alaska's foreign economic and political domination") (p. 143).

Despite these annoyances, however, there are important points made by this book. It is valuable to consider the history of the death penalty at the state level and to ponder the inferences one might draw from these accounts. AMERICA WITHOUT THE DEATH PENALTY is, for that reason, a useful complement to Stuart Banner's (2002) far superior macro-level history of capital punishment in the United States.

REFERENCES:

BANNER, Stuart. 2002. THE DEATH PENALTY: AN AMERICAN HISTORY. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

U. S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS. 2001a. CAPITAL PUNISHMENT 2000. Location: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/cp00.htm

U. S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS. 2001b. HOMICIDE TRENDS IN THE UNITED STATES. Location:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/homtrnd.htm

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Copyright 2002 by the author, Barry Latzer.