Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has signaled its support for the death penalty, several states are rushing to schedule executions. It's as if the court's approval of lethal injection has suddenly made it a health cure.
What ails the nation's flawed system of capital punishment won't be remedied, though, by tinkering with "the machinery of death," to use Justice Harry A. Blackmun's words.
States would be far wiser to continue their de facto moratorium on executions that held while the court considered this latest case. That would provide more time to examine and expose the many problems with capital punishment. Then, more states could follow New Jersey's sensible decision to get out of the execution business altogether.
That's what Justice John Paul Stevens wants, and no voice is more credible on the subject. Stevens backed reinstatement of the death penalty three decades ago, but last week he said it should be ended. He quoted the late Justice Byron White, who contended executions represent "the pointless and needed extinction of life with only marginal contributions" to society.
While a majority of the court last week deemed execution using lethal drugs a humane method, they did nothing to redress the fundamental unfairness and risks in applying the death penalty. Just the opposite, in fact.
The months leading up to the April 16 ruling on lethal injection had led to the delay of dozens of executions around the country. In effect, it was a national moratorium. That provided a prism through which the nation could examine flaws in the death penalty, including its falling disproportionately on poor and minority defendants. Even worse, dozens of death row inmates have later been proved innocent, many through DNA evidence.
As if to stack the deck against justice even further, in June the court under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. granted states leeway to remove jurors who expressed even slight doubts about the death penalty.
Another case under review - whether child rapists can be executed - could prompt the expansion of capital punishment for other non-homicide crimes, so this court clearly is headed the wrong way on the death penalty.
During the de facto moratorium, the New Jersey Legislature and Gov. Corzine replaced the death penalty with life-without-parole in first-degree murder cases. But now that reprieves have been voided for the three prisoners in other states who had contested the constitutionality of lethal injection, the rest of America appears ready to plunge back into executions.
That should not happen, especially in Pennsylvania, where work is under way to fund an Innocence Project to examine death row inmates' claims. That effort is sure to provide more evidence that the death penalty deserves to die.