1 Social Movement Lessons from the US Anti- Death Penalty Movement Jamie Harris Researcher May 22, 2020 © 2020 Sentience Institute Edited by Jacy Reese Anthis and Kelly McNamara. Many thanks to the researchers who provided feedback or checked the citations of their work, including Amber E. Boydstun, Robert M. Bohm, Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier, Wayne Sandholtz, Frank R. Baumgartner, Sangmin Bae, and Andrew Hammel. Thanks also to Tom Beggs for discussion on case study methodology. Abstract This report aims to assess (1) the extent to which the anti-death penalty movement in the United States, especially from 1966-2015, can be said to have successfully achieved its goals, (2) what factors caused the various successes and failures of this movement, and (3) what these findings suggest about how modern social movements should strategize. The analysis highlights the farmed animal movement as an illustrative example of the strategic implications for a variety of movements. Key findings of this report include that a narrow focus on legal strategies can discourage the growth of a grassroots movement that may be more effective in the longer term and that legislative change is possible without public support. Social Movement Lessons From the US Anti-Death Penalty Movement Jamie Harris | Sentience Institute |May 22, 2020 2 Table of Contents Abstract 1 Table of Contents 2 Introduction 4 Summary of Key Implications 6 A Condensed Chronological History of the US Anti-Death Penalty Movement 7 Early History of the ADPM 7 1872-1936: Sporadic, temporary legislative success 12 1936-1966: Declining execution rates 16 1966-72: Litigation and temporary legal success through Furman v. Georgia 27 1972-86: Backlash, legal reversal through Gregg v. Georgia, and the ADPM’s initial shift towards public- facing advocacy 33 1986-97: Peak support for the death penalty, some setbacks, some successes, and the beginnings of the ADPM’s shift towards messages and asks with broader appeal 49 1997-present: Growth of the moratorium movement and sporadic legislative success 60 The Extent of the Success of the US Anti-Death Penalty Movement 78 Changes to execution rates 78 Legislative and legal changes 79 Acceptance and inclusion 79 Changes to public opinion 80 Changes in the importance and salience of the issue 81 Provider availability 82 Organizational resources 82 Features of the US Anti-Death Penalty Movement 83 Intended beneficiaries of the movement 83 Institution 84 Advocacy 87 Society 91 Differing outcomes in the United States and Europe 94 Strategic Implications 96 Institutional Reform 96 The Causes of Judicial Change 96 The Effects of Judicial Change 102 The Causes of Legislative Change 109 The Effects of Legislative Change 133 Disruption to companies 147 Movement Composition 148 Social Movement Lessons From the US Anti-Death Penalty Movement Jamie Harris | Sentience Institute |May 22, 2020 3 Timing 153 Messaging 155 Potential Items for Further Study 167 Selected Bibliography 168 Social Movement Lessons From the US Anti-Death Penalty Movement Jamie Harris | Sentience Institute |May 22, 2020 4 Introduction The US anti-death penalty movement (ADPM) argues that the execution of criminals is immoral or otherwise undesirable. Its advocates therefore support, at least in part, an expansion of the moral circle to encompass convicted criminals, in the sense that they would share the right-to-life of non-convicts. Although there are important differences between the ADPM and farmed animal movement, there is a fundamental similarity between them: Advocates from both movements believe that the sentient beings they seek to protect are granted insufficient consideration, protection, or rights and that it is worth investing time and resources into securing more consideration, protection, or rights for them. Other features that affect the ADPM’s comparability with the farmed animal movement are listed below, but overall it seems that we can glean some strategic insight from the ADPM suitable for effective animal advocacy—that is, evidence on which animal advocacy strategies are most effective.1 As with Sentience Institute’s case study of the US anti-abortion movement, this report makes no attempt to evaluate the goals of either movement. This report is exclusively about the strategy of social movements, and while we will discuss goals insofar as they are relevant to strategic discussion, we deliberately avoid any moral assessment.2 This report provides a condensed history of the US ADPM with a focus on the 1960s to the present. For comparison, ADPMs in other countries are also considered briefly. After providing this history, the report draws tentative conclusions about which strategies seemed to be most effective for the ADPM and suggests potential implications for social movement strategy. The focus of this report is on strategic insights for the farmed animal movement, but some insights may be useful for other movements as well. The focus on the US ADPM, rather than on ADPMs in other countries or the broader US prisoners’ rights movement (which includes other goals of prisoner benefit, e.g. better living conditions), was principally due to the greater availability of research and evidence from sociologists, legal scholars, historians, and political scientists. However, compared to the US focus of SI’s case study of the anti-abortion movement,3 it seemed especially worthwhile to incorporate at least some international comparison on the US ADPM, given that the 1 For a list and summary of such questions, see “Summary of Evidence for Foundational Questions in Effective Animal Advocacy,” Sentience Institute, last updated June 21, 2018, https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/foundational-questions- summaries. For discussion of the extent to which the farmed animal movement can learn from history, see Jamie Harris, “What can the farmed animal movement learn from history?” (May 2019), https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/blog/what-can-the- farmed-animal-movement-learn-from-history. 2 Jamie Harris, “Social Movement Lessons From the US Anti-Abortion Movement”(November 26, 2019), https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/anti-abortion. 3 Jamie Harris, “Social Movement Lessons From the US Anti-Abortion Movement”(November 26, 2019), https://www.sentienceinstitute.org/anti-abortion focused exclusively on the US anti-abortion movement, noting that “[much activity and research of the effective animal advocacy community has focused on the US. This concentration of resources is at least partially justified by the strategic importance of the US as a country with a large number of animals in factory farmed conditions and substantial social, political, and economic influence over the rest of the world. Given the research gaps in our understanding of effective animal advocacy in the US, it also seems reasonable to focus on coming to stronger conclusions for the optimal movement strategy in that context, before seeking to test whether those conclusions hold in other contexts.” Social Movement Lessons From the US Anti-Death Penalty Movement Jamie Harris | Sentience Institute |May 22, 2020 5 US has retained the death penalty while 105 other countries have abolished its use.4 Europe is an especially important comparator because, since the 1970s, around half of the countries that have abolished capital punishment for all crimes have been European countries.5 This report was mainly undertaken as exploratory analysis rather than being designed to test explicit hypotheses regarding strategic effectiveness. Nevertheless, the author hoped that the report would provide evidence for or against the claims regarding effective strategy made in SI’s previous two social movement case studies6 and would provide strategic insight into the foundational questions in effective animal advocacy.7 As was the case at the start of the author’s research into the US anti-abortion movement, the author believed that the US ADPM had mostly failed at achieving its goals and therefore that this report would provide evidence that, on average, the tactics used by the US ADPM should be avoided by the farmed animal movement. In several other ways, this report borrows much of the methodology and framing of SI’s previous two social movement case studies. This report uses the terms capital punishment and death penalty interchangeably, although sometimes it is necessary to distinguish between those sentenced to death and those who are actually executed. Likewise, unless otherwise specified, the terms convict, criminal, and prisoner are used interchangeably, since these groups almost completely overlap in the context of this report. This usage is not intended to deny that some criminals are never convicted or that some prisoners have been wrongly convicted. Unless otherwise specified, the term ADPM is used to encompass both advocates of the total abolition of capital punishment and advocates of a national or statewide moratorium (suspension) on executions, even though some advocates of a moratorium may not support a permanent ban. De jure (legally enforced) abolition is sometimes distinguished from de facto abolition, where executions have ceased in practice but have not been legally banned. The term “grassroots” is used to refer to elements of the movement that include non- professionals, where broad participation is encouraged, and where there is low central control. 4 “European Convention on Human Rights,” European Court of Human Rights, accessed June 26, 2019, https://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Convention_ENG.pdf and the spreadsheet “Cumulative