"In 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Gregg v. Georgia that the death penalty was constitutional if it complied with certain specific provisions designed to ensure that it was reserved for the 'worst of the worst'. The same court had rejected the death penalty just four year…
Forty years and 1,400 executions after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty constitutional, eminent political scientist Frank Baumgartner and a team of younger scholars have collaborated to assess the empirical record and provide a definitive account of how the death p…