can independence. In fact, the ceremony of public execution in colonial America was modeled after that of early modern England and Continental Europe. When the Italian jurist Cesare Beccaria made waves in Europe with his treatise against capital punishment On Crimes and Punishment in 1794, the Founding Father Benjamin Rush, sometimes referred to as the “American Beccaria,” adopted and utilized these ideas in his push for abolition in America. The United States and Great Britain followed a similar timeline with the privatization of execution in the 19th century. As the masses became increasingly uncomfortable with the concept of public execution, the ceremony was moved behind closed doors. Privatization occurred in most major European countries from 1850 to 1870 and in the Northeastern region of the United States between 1830 and 1860 (Spierenburg 2011, 21).
Although some states like Rhode Island and Wisconsin abolished the death penalty altogether in the mid-1800s, it was not until the Progressive Period that America started to see a significant shift in state policy. In the first two decades of the 20th century, six states officially abolished capital punishment and many others imposed strict restrictions on its application (DPIC “History of the Death Penalty" 2013). Until the 1970s, political discourse in America on the death penalty concentrated largely on classifying capital crimes and debating different humane execution methods. The dialogue hardly touched the option of abolition. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, abolitionist campaigns had pushed the British Parliament to severely limit the use of capital punishment in the Homicide Act of 1957.
1960s-1970s: The Reflective Moratorium
1. Great Britain: A Successful Moratorium
Historical trends with respect to the death penalty in the United States and Great Britain followed a parallel evolution until a critical period, the mid-1960s. In 1965, the British Parliament voted to suspend the death penalty for an experimental five-year period with the Murder (Abolition) Act of 1965. This bill was pioneered by Labour politician Sydney Silverman and generated a lively debate over political conscience on the death penalty. After a rigorous five-year review of social science research and careful analysis of crime rates, the British Parliament voted with a majority of 158 to renew the Murder Act and the death penalty as a sanction for murder was permanently abolished on December 16, 1969 ("1969: MPs Vote to Abolish Hanging" 2013). Interestingly, at the time of the introduction of this bill, Sidney Silverman represented an overwhelmingly pro-death penalty constituency. Even after the Murder Act of 1965 passed, Silverman won re-election (Hammel 2011, 196). This particular case points to the level of political flexibility afforded British politicians to vote in accordance with their conscience, even if it conflicts with the will of the constituency.
In order to examine my hypothesis, I cross-referenced public polling data in Great Britain on the death penalty in the 1960s in search for a gap between popular sentiment and the decision of the British House of Commons. Since central British polling organization Ipsos MORI was founded at the end of the decade, polling data on the death penalty in the 1960s can only be gleaned from digitally archived articles in The Times. Nevertheless, a cross-reference of articles in The Times illustrates that private pollsters found the majority of the public supported the death penalty. My findings with the polling data were further substantiated by a documentary analysis of archived transcripts of the proceedings in the House of Commons for the Murder Act of 1965.
A thorough textual review of debates on the floor revealed that Members of Parliament were fully aware of the polling numbers and consciously decided to reject them as an influence on their vote. In fact, many politicians explicitly cited polling numbers in their speeches on the floor. For example, Member of Parliament (MP) Duncan Sandys reminded the Parliament on June 24, 1969 that "recent