by David Frum

About the author: David Frum is a contributing editor of the Weekly Standard, a conservative journal of opinion.

The co-perpetrator of the worst terrorist attack in American history; a woman convicted of pick-axing two sleeping people to death; a cold-blooded mail- bomber on trial for two murders and two maimings: These are some of the people who have convinced sympathetic listeners that they ought to escape the maximum legal punishment for their crimes. The death penalty is unequivocally constitutional. It is supported by a crushing majority of the American people. Moralists from the authors of the Bible to John Stuart Mill have regarded it as just. And yet somehow Americans encounter the most enormous difficulty persuading their justice system to put it into effect.

Every year the newspapers run stories about the...