Is the death penalty on the way out?

Last Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled that Florida’s death penalty sentencing violates the Sixth Amendment. Tomorrow, the court will consider whether to hear a death-row petition based on the Eighth. The first is comparatively narrow in scope: Florida has to stop sending people to its rather bustling death row unless that decision is made by a real live jury.

The second, however, could be quite sweeping. The petition argues that executing anyone—not just petitioner Shonda Walter, sentenced to death for the brutal killing of her elderly neighbor, James Sementelli—constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. It’s a challenge to the death penalty itself, nationwide.

The death penalty is on the decline in the U.S.—in terms of executions carried out, new death sentences imposed, and states that use it at all. Its opponents include a growing number of conservatives, whose objections stem in part from a distrust of the state’s ability to administer a program with such serious consequences. Death penalty abolitionists are strategizing about just which case might get the court to end the practice altogether. Perhaps Walter’s petition will be the one.