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But a U.S. public that has felt terrorized by murderers and thugs is unreceptive to promises that the worst may be over and understandably finds the current level of violent crime intolerable. According to a Gallup poll last fall, 72% of Americans now favor capital punishment, up from just 42% in 1966. "People are frightened and upset about crime in the streets," says William Bailey, a Cleveland State University sociologist. "Nothing seems to be done to solve the problem, so the feeling grows that if we can't cure murderers, something we can do is kill them." Jim Jablonski, 44, a Chicago steelworker, speaks for a lot of furious citizens. "Murderers got to pay," he says. For him the next sentence follows self-evidently: "I say, fry the bastards."
Execution by injection may be too new to have its tough-guy slang like "fry." But last month outside the prison at Huntsville, Texas, the sentiment was the same. As Charlie Brooks waited to be injected, a crowd of 300 gathered to celebrate. Some of the pro-execution revelers, mostly college students, carried placards; KILL 'EM IN VEIN, said one. "Most of the people I know are for capital punishment," declared Paula Huffman, 21, a Sam Houston State University senior at the deathwatch. "And so am I. Definitely." Nevertheless, when the moment arrived, just after midnight, she and the rest of her shivering, smiling chums suddenly turned quiet and grave.
Historically, American executions were public, the last in Kentucky in 1936. Hanging was standard for 200 years, through the 1800s. More primitive means—burnings in particular—were extreme rarities even in the 17th century. Up until 1900, nearly all executions were carried out by local jurisdictions; lynchings were as frequent as legal hangings. But by the start of the Depression, state authorities had mostly taken over the grim chore.
At that time, the U.S. was hardly less murderous than it is today. In 1933 there were 9.7 homicides per 100,000 Americans, which is just shy of the 1981 figure. The murder rate began a steady decline in 1934, but judges and juries meted out death sentences at a ferocious clip for the rest of the '30s. As many as 200 people a year were legally executed, more than ever before or since in the U.S. During the '30s, and even through the '50s, executions were so routine that they merited at most a paragraph or two in out-of-town newspapers.
Not just murderers were put to death. Rapists were executed every year in the U.S. until 1965.* After 1930, there were 455 men executed for rape, most of them in the South and 89% of them black, a majority grotesquely out of proportion to black sexual offenses. Black murderers too were executed much more frequently than white killers, a pattern that prevailed through the 1960s.
After World War II, executions became less popular. The reduction was steady: 82 by 1950, 49 in 1959 and finally just two in 1967, one of whom was Aaron Mitchell, a California murderer denied clemency by then Governor Ronald Reagan. The nation's chairs, gallows and gas chambers were temporarily retired partly because judicial standards became more scrupulous—often after legal battles waged by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (L.D.F.) and the American