A society can sentence people to death yet remain unwilling to actually execute them

Evidence

Condemned criminals are continually being added to death rows where, after appellate reviews, they await execution. Society is evidently loath to carry out this grim task. For example, California has 746 prisoners on death row (Death row inmates, 2015). However, in the past 38 years only 13 have been executed. New York State has adopted, abolished, and reinstated the death penalty, which ultimately was declared unconstitutional, as we have seen. New York had not executed a single convicted inmate since 1963 (Latest news and developments, 2015). Except for some southern states, the others that enforce the death penalty have executed none or only a few inmates over several decades. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2070

Categorization

• CANDY: California’s 746 death-row inmates versus 13 executions in 38 years is a striking, easy-to-retell number.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2070