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Thirty-five years ago, on July 2, 1976, on the eve of massive bicentennial celebrations, the U.S. Supreme Court in
Gregg v. Georgia voted 7-2 to re-instate capital punishment. There had been no executions in the U.S. since 1967.
The U.S. could have been a leader in the subsequent worldwide trend toward death penalty abolition; instead the U.S. has become an
outlier along with a minority of other countries (like China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia) that still kill prisoners.
What might have been?
Three of those 7 justices (Stevens, Blackmun and Powell) have since
regretted their vote in
Gregg, meaning that if there could be some sort of time-travel Stevens, Blackmun and Powell's Excellent Adventure do-over, the death penalty might have never come back.
But, as with executing likely
innocent people, you can't go back in time to undo your mistakes. The death penalty did come back.
Comment: So, remind us again, why did the UN sanction bombing Libya?