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![handle is hein.death/trphzm0001 and id is 1 raw text is:
Transcription of a portion of Hans Zeisel (HZ) interview with Mara Tapp (MT) in the Winter of 1992.
Hans's last interview, conducted shortly before his death on The Mara Tapp Show and aired on WBEZ,
Chicago's NPR affiliate.
MT
You're listening to Hans Zeisel, Professor Emeritus [at] the University of Chicago Law School. His 1965
book, The American Jury written with his dear friend and colleague, the late Harry Kalven, Jr., remains a
classic. Hans Zeisel has also been a tireless opponent of capital punishment, traveling to testify against
the death penalty to small quiet little courtrooms in unpublicized cases, always offering his view [and
expertise] without charge, even arguing on shows like Nightline with people like [Forner New York
Mayor] Ed Koch about the death penalty. Next you'll hear Hans Zeisel's views on the death penalty.
HZ
... I should begin by quoting a dear close friend of mine, a great attorney, [former U.S. Attorney for the
Northern District of Illinois Thomas P.] Tom Sullivan, who once said to me, Why are you worried about
these few hundred people we execute if we kill twenty, thirty, forty thousand people in car accidents
and, except for extreme situations, whom we don't really give a hoot about. Now, the problem is that
... my concern for the death penalty is not primarily my concern for the people on death row but for us
who care to execute [them]. My thoughts about the death penalty go far back to the end of World War I
when, during the last days of the war, ... a few hundred ... sailors ...threw their arms down because they
knew ... the war was over.
The present situation is strange. Except for the United States, no civilized country has anymore the
death penalty. The death penalty is completely eradicated in Europe. It is, with small exceptions, not
the law in the English Commonwealth. South America never had a regular death penalty for murder in
spite of all the civil wars and so forth. ... At present it is my understanding that the Soviet Union will
abolish the death penalty. With respect to the Soviet Union and Russia, one should perhaps add that
that was the first country in the world that abolished capital punishment [under Catherine the Great]
because [the Russians] read a book by the great Italian criminologist [Cesare Beccaria]who developed
his theory in a coffeehouse in Milan.
MT
You said something earlier that you passed over too quickly, the notion that the death penalty should be
abolished for us, not for the people whom we put to death.
HZ
Oh, I will come to that. One has to begin with the insight that 30 years ago the majority of people in the
United States were against the death penalty and, in fact, some eight of our states don't have the death
penalty. But then suddenly it grew to majority of roughly seventy percent [who were pro-death penalty]
MT
Which is where it stays now.
HZ
Where it stays now. If one interviews these people [about] why they are [for] the death penalty, ... they
say two things: The first thing is [the] person who commits murder deserves the death penalty. [The]
second thing they say [is] it reduces murder.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.death/trphzm0001&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)