Hopefully very soon - it's wasteful, inhumane violation of the 8th amendment, and expensive. We need an immediate federal moratorium and eventual abolition.
I've written about this before, but the Supreme Court's misapplication of the Eighth Amendment prohibition on "cruel and unusual punishment" is the clearest example of judicial overreach that is currently going on. (Only the Lochner era treatment of the Fourteenth Amendment is comparably bad.) The prohibition was intended as a limit on the judicial and the executive branches, not the legislative branch. In my opinion, the only valid reason for the court to strike down a punishment under the eighth would be if the prosecution had sought and obtained a punishment that was on the books, but hadn't been used in a long while. That still leaves Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment reasons to strike down particular cases or implementations of capital punishment.
As it pertains to the 8th Amendment, states should take the lead on banning capital punishment to outlaw it legislatively. I think inherently that the death penalty deprives a person of a second chance and life itself. Other countries grant the death penalty for offenses that do not warrant that punishment, we should be above the fray on this subject and instate an immediate moratorium on the federal death penalty. The practice itself is inhumane and I agree that other provisions can be used. The death penalty is also wasteful, expensive, and ineffective at serving as a deterrent to prevent crimes.
What do you think about the case
People v. Anderson in California?