In October, republican presidential candidate Andy...

In October, republican presidential candidate Andy Martin, who is on the ballot in New Hampshire, announced he would campaign in the 2000 presidential primaries asking Republican voters to reject the "culture of death" which is "executing our future with America's electorate." "I favor fighting crime," Martin said. "But, the death penalty -- which is rejected by every other civilized nation in the world -- diminishes us and makes America out to be a nation of jackals. The death penalty has cheapened respect for life, coarsened our judicial system and fostered the culture of death that is boomeranging among our young." "The trend over the past 20 years has been more states with the death penalty, more crimes eligible, more executions,'' said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington-based group critical of how capital punishment is applied. "These are the first steps in the other direction. It's too early to tell whether this is a large trend away from the death penalty, but it's different than other years.'' "People are beginning to look beyond the political speak of being tough on crime,'' said Walter H. White, Jr., chairman of the American Bar Association's section on Individual Rights and Responsibilities. "There is significant progress in the fact that people are debating the moratorium.'' In 1997, the ABA called for a temporary halt to executions. "This is the start of a movement that will look at a death penalty moratorium as a viable option,'' said Tony Banout, co-director of the Moratorium Now project at the Quixote Center in Hyattsville, Maryland, "We are just looking at the beginning.''