Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.; S0376; Capital Punishment
- Episode Number
- S0376
- Episode
- Capital Punishment
- Producing Organization
- Southern Educational Communications Association
- South Carolina Educational Television Network
- Contributing Organization
- Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford University (Stanford, California)
- AAPB ID
- cpb-aacip/514-6h4cn6zq07
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- Description
- Episode Description
- The State of Florida had just executed John Spenkelink, in the first exercise of capital punishment in the United States in two years. An absorbing and frequently heated discussion with the principal legal antagonists in Spenkelink's case. TS: "If Mr. Shevin says it's a deterrent and he wants to execute people ... then I think they should be called upon to prove in a court of law that there is a real deterrent, and that this man's death is necessary in order to save another person's life. Of course they can't do it and they've never done it." WFB: "Well, of course you can't do that under any circumstances." RS: "Except for one fact, Mr. Buckley: that the number of murders in America never rose above 9,000 ... from 1935 to 1965. In '65, when we stopped using the death penalty effectively in this country, until '75 the number of murders rose to 22,500." Currently there is only a digitized transcript available for this episode.
- Series Description
- The television series Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. was a venue for debate and discussion on political, social, and philosophical issues with experts of the day. Firing Line broadcasts from 1966 through March 1971 were produced and syndicated by WOR-TV, a commercial station in New York, but some of them were also broadcast on noncommercial television stations. Starting in April 1971, Firing Line broadcasts were produced by the Southern Educational Communications Association, an arm of South Carolina Educational Television. Hoover Institution Library & Archives' Firing Line collection guide can be found at: https://www.hoover.org/library-archives/collections/firing-line.
- Date
- 1979-06-23
- Asset type
- Episode
- Genres
- Talk Show
- Topics
- Public Affairs
- Subjects
- United States; Capital punishment; Spenkelink, John
- Rights
- Copyright held by Stanford University. This copy is provided for educational and research purposes only. No publication, further reproduction, or reuse of copies, beyond fair use, may be made without the express written permission of the Hoover Institution Library & Archives on behalf of Stanford University.
- Media type
- Moving Image
- Credits
-
-
Guest: Shevin, Robert
Guest: Simon, Tobias
Host: Buckley, William F., Jr.
Producing Organization: Southern Educational Communications Association
Producing Organization: South Carolina Educational Television Network
- AAPB Contributor Holdings
-
Stanford University
Identifier: 80040.618 (Hoover Institution)
Generation: Proxy
Duration: 1:00:00
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- Citations
- Chicago: “Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.; S0376; Capital Punishment,” 1979-06-23, Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford University, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed July 16, 2025, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-514-6h4cn6zq07.
- MLA: “Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.; S0376; Capital Punishment.” 1979-06-23. Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford University, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. July 16, 2025. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-514-6h4cn6zq07>.
- APA: Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.; S0376; Capital Punishment. Boston, MA: Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford University, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-514-6h4cn6zq07