September 11, 2001

September 11, 2001, enters the book’s account as a political turning point in the contested retreat from capital punishment. The terrorist attacks in New York City and the threats of terrorism and global conflict that followed appeared to interrupt a growing movement away from executions, even as that interruption proved temporary and national rates later fell again.

A Retreat Already Under Way

Before the attacks, public attention to people who had been wrongly convicted and sentenced to death had helped change the national climate. The death-sentencing rate in the United States began to decline in 1999. In this chronology, September 11 did not initiate the retreat from capital punishment; it arrived while that retreat was already gathering force.

A Political Interruption

The book links the attacks and the ensuing atmosphere of terrorism and global conflict to a disruption in progress toward repealing the death penalty. It describes an apparent interruption rather than a permanent reversal: a few years later, both execution rates and death-sentencing rates were declining again. The date thus divides a period of growing skepticism from a renewed downward trend, while leaving the precise political mechanisms of that interruption unstated.

The National Trend and Alabama’s Exception

By 2010, annual executions in the United States had fallen to less than half their 1999 number, and several states had removed capital punishment from their laws: New Jersey, New York, Illinois, New Mexico, Connecticut, and Maryland. The pace of executions had slowed even in Texas, where nearly 40 percent of the approximately 1,400 executions carried out in the modern era had taken place.

Alabama diverged from that national movement. Although its death-sentencing rate had also declined from its late-1990s level, it remained the highest in the country; by the end of 2009, Alabama had the highest per-capita execution rate. The contrast makes clear that September 11 belongs to a national political chronology, not a uniform change in practice: the broader decline continued, but its pace and consequences varied by state.

Historical Significance

The book presents September 11 as a hinge in the history of capital punishment, not as an endpoint. The date interrupts a decline that had begun amid mounting attention to wrongful convictions, after which execution and death-sentencing rates resumed their fall. Its significance lies in this uneven sequence: a national turn away from executions could be slowed by a climate of fear and conflict, yet it was not extinguished—and it did not prevent Alabama from maintaining an exceptionally high rate of execution.