![handle is hein.cow/anamacp0284 and id is 1 raw text is: FOREWORD
THE American Law Institute has recently undertaken the task of preparing a
model penal code. In discussing the many issues that demand consideration by
the drafters, Professor Herbert Wechsler wrote a few months ago:
Should the death penalty be retained as the highest sanction? Viewed nationally there
have been in recent years between 100 and 150 executions annually. Can the dispatching
of these individuals, their selection determined by incalculable chances, make sufficient
contribution to prevention to outweigh the brutalizing and sensational factors involved in
taking life? Is it meaningful upon the issue of prevention that Rhode Island is an abo-
lition state without its homicide rate comparing unfavorably with that of Massachusetts
or that Michigan's does not suffer by contrast with that of Illinois? This is an issue that
merits a larger hold upon the mind and conscience of the country than it has received in
recent years. [Herbert Wechsler, The Challenge of a Modern Penal Code, 65 Harvard
Law Review (May 1952), pp. 1097-1133, at p. 1124.]
There is something unique about the death penalty. No one today seriously ob-
jects to fines or to imprisonment as punishments, even though there are differences
of opinion concerning the manner in which they are executed or concerning the
classes of offenses or offenders to which they are to be applied. But when the
death penalty is discussed, many persons object to its very existence, claiming that
it is improper and should therefore be removed from our list of punishments. The
debate has been going on for at least two centuries-at least since the young Italian
jurist Beccaria challenged the validity of capital punishment in the middle of the
eighteenth century. Since then many countries have abolished it. A number of
the states of the Union have also done so, some of them only temporarily.
There is a considerable literature on the death penalty in the United States, but
nevertheless Justice Felix Frankfurter, in his testimony before the Royal Commis-
sion on Capital Punishment in 1950, decried the fact that so little factual informa-
tion about it and its effectiveness had been assembled. This issue of THE ANNALS
attempts to meet this deficiency in a small degree. The reader will determine for
himself whether or not the authors have succeeded in presenting their data in an
objective manner, thus contributing to our knowledge of the question. There are
no doubt many aspects which have not received adequate treatment, for lack of
space. Some important gaps will also be noted, especially the absence of an ar-
ticle which clearly shows what crimes are made capital in the various states and in
federal law. Such an article had been promised but was not delivered to us.
THORSTEN SELLIN
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