Gridlock News

While many states are losing their taste for the death penalty, the federal government is putting their death penalty push into overdrive. 

The last several years have seen many states sometimes led by the courts and some times led by Governors, putting the death penalty on hold or even repealing it.  There have been notable questions and problems about the legitimacy of the convictions to the constant juxtaposition of killing someone without being cruel.

While the states are killing fewer people, the federal government seems to have acquired a blood lust.  The number of people on Federal death row has doubled in the last six years according to the Wall Street Journal's Article "Federal Prosecutors Widen Pursuit of Death Penalty as States Ease Off" by Christopher Conkey and Gary Fields.

Plus the Federal government is delivering death verdicts with juries that have not convicted people to death row at the state level for decades.  The federal death penalty was reinstated in1988 after being revoked for almost three quarters of a century.  All executions take place in Indiana. 

Almost all other developed countries around the world condemn the United States for executing convicted felons.  It could be possible that as the States loose their blood lust for killing, that the Federal Government will take up that motivation and turn Indiana into the Developed Country's Death Capital of the World.  That raises an ugly specter for Indiana, which is fighting to bring business back into the state.

Utah has in the past fought to keep nuclear wastes from being dumped in its backyard by the feds, fearing the long term ramifications of becoming the nuclear waste land of the United States.  Could Indiana face a similar problem as it becomes the Death Row Waste land for the country?

At some point this conflict between the state rights and national priority might boil to a head with extreme issues such as nuclear waste disposal and the death penalty.  Leaving the question of how far might things go before states put their foot down and say that enough is enough.