The American Law Institute, which created the intellectual framework for the modern capital justice system almost 50 years ago, recently announced the systemic failure of capital punishment. The institute, composed of 4,000 judges, lawyers and law professors voted in October to disavow the structure it had created, “in light of the current intractable institutional and structural obstacles to ensuring a minimally adequate system for administering capital punishment.” The study commissioned by the institute concluded that, “decades of experience had proved the system could not reconcile the twin goals of individualized decisions about who should be executed and systemic fairness.”

It also found that capital punishment was plagued by racial disparities; was expensive; defense lawyers often underpaid and ineffective; innocent persons were at risk for execution; and undermined by political considerations.

This is a significant development in the slow movement towards the recognition of the fact that the “machinery of death” is irretrievably broken. See New York Times, Tuesday, January 5, 2010, “Shapers of Death Penalty Give Up on Their Work”.