Some crimes are so ghastly that even death-penalty skeptics find it hard, or at least inopportune, to challenge the moral intuition that calls for capital punishment; thus, there will probably always be a death penalty in the United States, as long as that moral intuition remains widely felt, and as long as the people can and will express it through democratic institutions.
Agreeing with South Carolina’s prosecutors, who are also seeking death for Roof, Lynch determined that his cold-blooded, racially motivated slaughter, coupled with his lack of remorse, amply fulfilled the Justice Department’s stringent criteria for invoking this rarely used power.
Two of the most popular arguments against the death penalty — its alleged disparate impact on black killers of whites, and the risk of condemning an innocent person — patently don’t apply to Roof.
All that would remain is a pure moral objection; that’s Sanders’s position, and a perfectly honorable one. Notwithstanding much commentary, however, it is not the view of most Americans, or even close.
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