After talking with scholars, judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, prison officials and murder victim families, we have concluded that even as America executes prisoners at an appallingly high rate, the death penalty's days are numbered. The public still embraces the death penalty in theory, but looks at it with an increasingly critical eye. That's one reason California, for example, has had several hundred prisoners on death row for a decade or more but has executed only a few since 1980.

The past year has been a turning point, with the continuing rise in the number of executions forcing the public, the media and religious figures to confront the issue. Perhaps the most significant moment came when Illinois Gov. George Ryan, a conservative Republican, halted executions in that state, the first such moratorium in the country. It is officials like Ryan--tough-minded but troubled about state killing--who will bring an end to executions in this country. Ryan's move met with little public or political opposition, a measure of how much the support for executions has dropped. Related actions have occurred in many states, including New Hampshire, where the House voted to abolish the death penalty, a decision later overturned by the governor's veto.

Although polls are drifting in the anti-death penalty direction, lawmakers and candidates continue to embrace the death penalty, convinced it would be political suicide to act otherwise. But they are increasingly reluctant to carry on their own shoulders the moral and psychological burden of state killing. A recent Gallup poll found support for capital punishment at its lowest level in 19 years, down to 66% today. Support plummets when tough alternative sentencing, such as life without parole, is an option.

Until recently, in most states, there was no such thing as true "life without parole." Even convicted murderers often emerged from prison eventually. The public knew this. In recent years, however, more than two-thirds of the states, including California, have enacted procedures for sentencing some murderers to life without parole with no chance that they will ever get out. Many recent polls have shown that support for the death penalty drops to about 50% when those polled were asked to choose between execution or life without parole for convicted killers.

The growing support for life without parole signals the beginning of the end for capital punishment in our society. The number of those opposed or ambivalent about executions will grow so large that the U.S. Supreme Court, or dozens of state legislatures, will move against executions.

Even if opposition to the death penalty does not reach majority levels, that doesn't mean that executions can't be outlawed in America. Capital punishment had majority support in many Western nations, such as France, England and Canada, at the time they abolished the death penalty, and yet there was no widespread protest.

Some of the trends that led other countries to abolition are occurring in America, including the growing number of legislators who are speaking against the death penalty, and outrage over the possible execution of innocent people, especially as DNA evidence has come into play. Evolving support for life without parole as a preferred alternative to executions could change the way judges, lawmakers and the media respond to this issue on every important level, especially if new cases of innocent prisoners on death row come to light. This will foster the growing realization that, since the justice system can never be 100% right, it must not be allowed to administer a punishment that's 100% irreversible. America would then join most of the modern industrial world, which has abandoned capital punishment as a savage relic of a less enlightened age.

Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell are authors of "Who Owns Death? Capital Punishment, the American Conscience and the End of Executions," just published by William Morrow.

Copyright 2001 Los Angeles Times

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