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Like previous generations of anti-abortion activists in the immediate post-Roe v. Wade world, people seeking to end the death penalty have no prospect<\/a> of winning in the Supreme Court. And much like those activists the movement to abolish the death penalty has had to adapt its strategy.<\/p>\n As Sarah Kliff a writer for Vox<\/em> observed<\/a>, the pro-life movement experimented with different ways of accomplishing this goal, \u201cwhether targeting abortion providers, their clinics, or the procedures a woman has to go through before terminating a pregnancy.\u201d<\/p>\n And in state after state the anti-abortion movement succeeded.<\/p>\n Today, death penalty abolitionists are trying to do something similar. Just as the pro-life movement has, unfortunately for women across the country, been successful in slowing or stopping them from exercising their legal rights and obtaining abortions, the gradualist, incremental strategy of death penalty abolitionists shows great promise.<\/p>\n Rather than mounting a frontal assault on capital punishment, in many states and localities, anti-death penalty activists are trying to ensure that even when the death penalty is legal it will be hard, costly or impossible to use.<\/p>\n One part of the strategy involves making it hard for states to get drugs for lethal injection. Another is to mount vigorous, extended court battles to save, or delay the execution of, particular capital defendants.<\/p>\n Another key, and novel, part of their effort is convincing prosecutors, seemingly unlikely allies, not to bring capital cases.<\/p>\n Last week, the movement succeeded in doing just that. On Feb. 17, 56 prosecutors from across the country issued a joint statement<\/a> saying that \u201cour country\u2019s system of capital punishment is broken. It is time to work together toward systemic changes that will bring about the elimination of the death penalty nationwide.\u201d<\/p>\n This statement marks a watershed moment in the struggle to end the death penalty in the United States.<\/p>\n Prosecutors play a key, but sometimes underappreciated, role throughout America\u2019s criminal justice system. They have virtually unlimited discretion<\/a> to decide whether to initiate or proceed with any criminal case. Then-Attorney General Robert Jackson got it right when in 1940 he said<\/a> that the \u201cprosecutor has more power over life, liberty, and reputation than any other person in America,\u201d and that \u201chis discretion is tremendous.\u201d<\/p>\n What is true in other parts of the justice system is also true in capital cases. Prosecutors make the critical choice whether or not to charge an offender with an offense that carries the possibility of a death sentence. And \u201cDespite the grave implications of this decision,\u201d as Jonathan DeMay wrote in Fordham Urban Law Journal years ago<\/a>, \u201cthe United States Supreme Court has never required that any procedures or guidelines be promulgated to control the process employed by prosecutors to reach this decision.\u201d<\/p>\n According to the educational group Capital Punishment in Context<\/a>, \u201cThe financial resources available in a jurisdiction, the views of constituents and the local political climate, and the prosecutors own views can affect the likelihood a defendant will face the death sentence.\u201d<\/p>\n So great is this prosecutorial power that some opponents of capital punishment argue<\/a> that \u201cWhether someone is sentenced to death has become more a function of the prosecutor on their case than the severity of their crime.\u201d\u00a0Even when they use this power in an arbitrary or discriminatory manner or engage in egregious misconduct, they are rarely disciplined<\/a> by either the bar or the courts.<\/p>\n