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Answer the following questions
1.Do you agree with Beccaria’s assessment of the death penalty? Explain.
2.What portions of his reasoning do you most agree or disagree with?

Transcription of the video
The Death Penalty Is Dying Out

LESTER HOLT, anchor:

We’re back now with a surprising statistic, 2011 is ending with the lowest number of death sentences handed out by juries since capital punishment was reinstated in the US 35 years ago. Opponents of the death penalty say Americans are turning away from it, worried that the justice system sometimes gets it wrong. We get the story tonight from our justice correspondent Pete Williams.

PETE WILLIAMS, reporting:

An emotional scene outside an Arkansas courthouse as three men walk to freedom after 18 years in prison, one of them on death row, all of them wrongly convicted of murder. A similar scene in Illinois. Ronald Kitchen released after spending 21 years in prison, 13 on death row.

RONALD KITCHEN: It really hasn’t hit me yet. It’s like surreal.

WILLIAMS: As these scenes are repeated, say opponents of the death penalty, with DNA evidence often making the difference, jurors have become less willing to impose the ultimate punishment. This year brought 78 death sentences nationwide, the smallest number since 1976.

RICHARD DIETER (Death Penalty Information Center): It was indicative of a concern among the public, among the jurors, that the death penalty can’t be trusted. That you might make a mistake and find out information five, 10 years from now that would make you think twice.

WILLIAMS: This year also saw fewer executions, 43 in all down from a high of 98, 12 years ago. Even in Texas, which often has the most in the country, just 13 executions this year, about half of last year’s total. Illinois this year took the death penalty off the books entirely. In Oregon, Governor John Kitzhaber barred executions as long as he’s in office calling them morally wrong.

Governor JOHN KITZHABER: I refuse to be part of a compromised and inequitable system any longer.

WILLIAMS: Three more states, California, Maryland and Connecticut, may consider repealing capital punishment next year. And the latest Gallup poll finds that while 61 percent of Americans say they favor the death penalty, that’s the least support since the mid-1970s. Even so, 34 states retain the death penalty. Supporters say it’s imposed less often not because jurors think it’s unfair, but because a sentence of life without parole doesn’t invite decades of legal appeals. Another factor, they say, violent crime is down.

SCOTT BURNS (National District Attorneys Association): It’s not that society that no longer supports the death penalty. It’s the fact that there are just fewer murders in the United States by almost 50 percent and that’s good news.

WILLIAMS: Whatever the reasons, the numbers show that while the death penalty in America remains an option, its heyday is in the past. Pete Williams, NBC News, Washington.