“
Let us remember why we have the death penalty in our legal codes today, and for over 60 offenses. It is not because some wise thinkers or ethicists once gathered together and deliberated, “Well, murder is a serious crime, and thus we need the ultimate penalty of death in our legal code to express society’s outrage over murder, to help victims ‘find closure, to deter wrongdoers,’ and so on.” No, the death statutes are there more as a historical-cultural habit. We have the death penalty today because we are still living out a historical legacy that resorted to officials killing to expropriate the lands of commoners and indigenous peoples, to enforce slavery by lynching practices, to terrorize members of labor unions and others.[186] The death penalty is a feature of the founding and routine violence of the U.S. state.
”
”
Mark Lewis Taylor (The Executed God: The Way of the Cross in Lockdown America, 2nd Edition)