Death Penalty

Archive Report

Decline of Executions in Legal States

Rosenberg Case and New Legal Studies

Execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, after conviction on charges of conspiring to transmit atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, was the first application of the extreme penalty as punishment for espionage in the peacetime history of the United States. World-wide attention to the case, both before and after the Rosenbergs were sent to death, has revived public interest in the long-standing debate over the worth of capital punishment as a protection to society.

Question still is raised whether the interests of justice and the nation were best served by execution of the Rosenbergs, despite overwhelming evidence of their guilt, the many appeals that gave them the benefit of every protective device of the law, ...

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