A recent poll found that 65 percent of African Americans in South Carolina want Roof’s life to be spared. By comparison, nearly the same number of white people in the state believe he should be executed for his crimes. Support for capital punishment—among black people, writ large—has fallen through the years. Whether because of our own distrust for a government that disproportionately imprisons African Americans—who currently represent more than half of those who await execution—or because of religious traditions, as a people we have turned away from an “eye for an eye.”
Retribution, many will tell you, is not justice.
Broadly, 6 in 10 Americans support capital punishment for the most heinous crimes—up nearly 20 percentage points since the 1960s. Black people, according to Gallup, are the least likely to condemn a convicted murderer to death.
Government “can’t be trusted to control its own bureaucrats or collect taxes equitably or fill a pothole, much less decide which of its citizens to kill,” wrote Sister Helen Prejean, one of the foremost anti-death penalty activists, in her book Dead Man Walking.
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