ABSTRACT
The an ti-death penalty m ovem ent has reached a success rate and a volume level not seen since the early 1970s, w ith execution rates de clining, public support for the death penalty falling, and Supreme C ourt and lower court intervention to halt executions increasing. B ut this is not your p aren ts’ an ti-dea th penalty movement. T oday’s activ ists rely heavily on strategies th a t did not play a prom inent role in the previous surge in an ti-death penalty activity. T he first of these, thor oughly debated elsewhere, is the innocence movem ent, which focuses on the fallibility of the crim inal justice system and the possibility of executing an innocent person .1 The second, far less debated, strategy is the an ti-death penalty m ovem ent’s offering of an alternative to the death penalty: life w ithout parole. Abolitionists have blitzed both leg islatures and the m edia w ith pleas to adopt life-w ithout-parole statutes in order to reduce executions,2 arguing th a t “[t]he sentence of life w ith out parole is a stronger, fairer, and more reliable punishm ent.”3
