Eric Holder, Barack Obama's nominee for Attorney General of the United States and a personal opponent of the death penalty, might draw inspiration from a worthy historical mentor and predecessor in this high office: William Bradford (1755-1795).

Bradford, a premier law enforcement official and jurist during the Revolutionary and early federal eras, served as Attorney General of Pennsylvania and then as a Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. These were exciting and often tumultuous years when Pennsylvania moved to enact a more humane scheme of criminal justice and build a modern prison system.  In 1794, he was appointed U. S. Attorney General under President George Washington, serving until his death the following year.

Bradford deserves special credit for two legal innovations presented in a report to the Governor of Pennsylvania in 1793. The first was an argument that the death penalty may well in fact be "unnecessary," and thus unconstitutionally "cruel," for any crime including even deliberate murder.

Holding that the main purposes of punishment are "to prevent the offender from repeating the crime, and to deter others from its commission," Bradford concludes that imprisonment can meet both of these purposes. "If, therefore, these two objects can be obtained by any penalty short of death, to take away life, in such case, seems to

be an unauthorized act of power." Further, Bradford emphasizes that imprisonment leaves room for the "reformation" of the offender -- a vital goal more recently known as "rehabilitation."

Bradford's second and better-known innovation was his proposal for dividing the  crime of murder into degrees, quickly adopted by the Pennsylvania legislature in 1794 and since then by the vast majority of the States. Murder in the first degree as he originally defined it would be confined to acts of "deliberate assassination." His legislative program was aimed at abolishing capital punishment for all crimes other than first degree murder (and possibly high treason) as a first step towards total abolition.

As U.S. Attorney General under President Obama, Eric Holder may have the precious opportunity, as well as daunting task, of helping to complete his predecessor William Bradford's labor of reform by nudging the United States in the direction of the growing majority of world nations which have moved beyond executions to more enlightened means of law enforcement.