t Britain occurred in 1964 and the Murder (Abolition of the Death Penalty) Act of 1965 suspended the death penalty sanction for murder, the United States established a similar national moratorium period for executions from 1972 to 1976 while the Supreme Court reviewed the constitutionality of the practice. However, America diverged with Great Britain at this time when the Supreme Court ruled in Gregg v. Georgia that the death penalty did not violate the Eighth Amendment and therefore could not be abolished by federal mandate. In the final section of the historical analysis, I examine the third crucial time period, the 1990s. The 1990s was the ultimate period of differentiation in capital punishment policy, as the United States dramatically expanded the institution through “tough on crime” political efforts while the British House of Commons repeatedly denied motions to re-institute capital punishment in Great Britain.
In examining these three crucial time periods, the comparative historical analysis employs several methods of original research to accurately track trends in death penalty politics, including polling data, discourse analysis and documentary analysis. In terms of historical polling, the data came from Ipso MORI for Great Britain and Gallup for the United States. In terms of discourse analysis, the paper relies on archived articles from The Times (referred to as the London Times in the United States) and the New York Times. Finally, in terms of documentary analysis, the paper uses transcripts from proceedings in the British House of Commons and speeches made by American political officials. Ultimately, this paper uses original documents and other primary sources to test a new structural theory on how death penalty politics historically progressed in two major Western democracies.
Before the findings of the comparative historical analysis are presented, a brief inquiry into the differences between American and British political structures is required. The United States is essentially a collection of democratic states with an enormous breadth of political dispositions and diversity. A central tenet of the American federal institution is the emphasis on states' rights, which is based on a fundamental respect for local determinism. In contrast, Great Britain, like many other European democracies, is a smaller, more centralized parliamentary democracy. This structural distinction is important because, while Great Britain can only abolish the death penalty on a federal level, the American federal government has the default option of letting the contentious issue work itself out in the state legislatures. Since only eighteen American states have abolished the death penalty (DPIC "Year End Report" 2012), this procedural strain alone could account for the United States lagging behind its European counterparts in death penalty abolition.
While the United States is sometimes referred to as one of the most direct representative democracies in the world, the British democracy is complemented and influenced by political relics from a time past. The British government still involves their constitutional monarchy and maintains a House of Lords, a legislative body with hereditary and appointed members. While the British House of Commons certainly supplements the political structure with elected representatives, it is important to note that even the most democratic legislative body in Great Britain is not held hostage by public sentiment. For example, the Prime Minister has the power to set the date of general elections as long as it does not exceed a five-year gap. While the United States attempts to create some distance from the public with six-year terms in the Senate as opposed to the diminutive two-year House of Representatives terms, even U.S. Senators are given no where near the political flexibility afforded British government officials.
Early Historical Roots
Despite these structural differences, the shared historical roots of capital punishment in Great Britain and the United States can be traced back as far as Ameri