Arkansas Law Review Volume 70 | Number 2 Article 9 January 2017 Capital Punishment: The Great American Paradox A. M. Stroud III Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.uark.edu/alr Part of the Criminal Law Commons Recommended Citation A. M. Stroud III, Capital Punishment: The Great American Paradox, 70 Ark. L. Rev. 369 (2017). Available at: http://scholarworks.uark.edu/alr/vol70/iss2/9 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UARK. It has been accepted for inclusion in Arkansas Law Review by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks@UARK. For more information, please contact
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[email protected]. Capital Punishment: The Great American Paradox A. M. Stroud III∗ I. INTRODUCTION On June 6, 1944, American forces landed on Omaha and Utah beaches as part of the Normandy invasion that had as its objective the liberation of occupied Europe from the tyranny of the Nazi Occupation.1 This was America at its finest hour. This was not a professional army, but an army consisting of young men who had been drafted or had enlisted after Pearl Harbor.2 The young men came from all walks of life: farmers, teachers, family members, mechanics, truck drivers and the rest, with the sole objective to make the world safe again from the atrocities of the Axis Powers. They were part of America’s Greatest Generation.3 Ten months later the war was over; Germany had been defeated.4 Europe owed America a debt of gratitude. American blood had been spilled to drive the Hun into ∗ I would like to acknowledge and thank Brain Gallini, Associate Dean and Professor of Law at the University of Arkansas for extending the invitation for me to be the keynote speaker at the 2016 symposium on the death penalty.