ms to be growing awareness that the death penalty is just another government program that doesn't work very well," says Stephen Bright of the Southern Center for Human Rights. When Gov. George Ryan of Illinois, a pro-death-penalty Republican, imposed a moratorium on capital punishment in January after 13 wrongly convicted men were released from Illinois's death row, it looked like a-one-day event. Instead, the decision has resonated as one of the most important national stories of the year. The big question it raises, still unanswered: how can the 37 other states that allow the death penalty be so sure that their systems don't resemble the one in Illinois? In that sense, the latest debate on the death penalty seems to be turning less on moral questions than on practical ones. While Roman Catholicism and other faiths have become increasingly outspoken in their opposition to capital punishment (even Pat Robertson is now against it), the newwave of doubts seems more hardheaded than softhearted; more about justice than faith. The death penalty in America is far from dead. All it takes to know that is a glimpse of a grieving family, yearning for closure and worried about maximum sentences that aren't so long. According to the new NEwswEEK Poll, 73 percent still support capital punishment in at least some cases, down only slightly in five years. Heinous crimes still provoke calls for the strongest penalties. It's understandable, for instance, how the families victimized by the recent shooting at a New York Wendy's that left five dead would want the death penalty. And the realists are right: the vast majority of those on death row are guilty as hell. But is a "vast majority" good enough when the issue is life or death? After years when politicians bragged about streamlining the process to speed up executions, the momentum is now moving the opposite way The homicide rate is down 30 percent nationally in five years, draining some of the intensit...
