8 - Capital Punishment, the Courts, and the Early Origins of the Carceral State, 1920s–1960s

Summary

“Gentlemen, I wish you all good luck. I believe I am going to a good place, and I am ready to go. I want only to say that a great deal has been said about me that is untrue. I am bad enough. It is cruel to make me out worse.”

– William Francis Kemmler

Beginning with the 1966 gubernatorial races of Ronald Reagan in California and Claude Kirk, Jr., in Florida, the death penalty reemerged over the next two decades to become a central issue in key electoral contests. By the 1990s, leading candidates for national or statewide office rarely opposed capital punishment. Politicians regularly boasted about their willingness and indeed eagerness to carry out executions. In his 1990 reelection bid, Governor Bob Martinez (R-Fla.) proclaimed in his television ads: “I have now signed some 90 death warrants in the state of Florida.” His commercials ended with a picture of a smiling Ted Bundy, the serial killer whose January 1989 execution after a decade on death row was memorialized by cheering crowds and printed T-shirts with a recipe for “Fried Bundy.” During the 1992 presidential primaries, Governor Bill Clinton made a point of flying back to Arkansas to sign the death warrant of Rickey Ray Rector, who had turned a gun on himself after killing a police officer in a robbery gone awry and ended up severely mentally handicapped. Running for governor of California in 1998, Democrat Gray Davis cited repressive Singapore as a model for capital punishment.