Capital Punishment Has Been Around

Capital punishment has been around in this country since before it was official a country at all. Over the years there have been many changes in the way that the law has been applied to this form of punishment. The Supreme Court has struggled over the years with the constitutionality of capital punishment. In 1972 in Furman v. Georgia (408 U.S. 238), the Court ruled not that the death penalty itself was unconstitutional, but that the precise laws by which it was applied were. This caused many states to have to rewrite their laws surrounding this controversial form of punishment.

In the beginning Britain influenced America's utilization of the death penalty more than any other nation. When European settlers came to the new world, they brought with them the idea of capital punishment. The first recorded execution in the new colonies was that of Captain George Kendall which took place in the Jamestown colony of Virginia in 1608. Kendall was put to death for being a spy for Spain. In 1612, Virginia Governor Sir Thomas Dale put into place the Divine, Moral and Martial Laws, which presented the death penalty for even minor crimes such as stealing grapes, killing chickens, and trading with the Indians. Laws concerning the death penalty varied from colony to colony. The Massachusetts Bay Colony held its first execution in 1630, even though the Capital Laws of New England didn't go into effect until many years later. The New York Colony introduced the Duke's Laws of 1665 (Introduction to the Death Penalty, 2010).

Even though some states got rid of the death penalty in the mid-Nineteenth Century, it was in fact the first half of the Twentieth Century that marked the commencement of the progressive period of reform in the United States. From 1907 to 1917, six states totally banned the death penalty and three limited it to the hardly ever committed crimes of treason and first degree murder of a law enforcement official. Yet, this reform was brief. There was a frantic feeling in the U.S., as people began to panic about the threat of revolution in the wake of the Russian Revolution. Additionally, the U.S. had just entered World War I and there were strong class conflicts as socialists increased the first serious challenge to capitalism (Introduction to the Death Penalty, 2010).

The use of cyanide gas was initiated in 1924 as Nevada tried to find a more civilized way of putting to death its inmates. Gee Jon was the first person put to death by lethal gas. The state tried to force cyanide gas into Jon's cell while he slept, but this turned out to be impossible, and the gas chamber was built. From the 1920's to the 1940's, there was resurgence in the utilization of the death penalty. This was thought to be because of the writings of criminologists, who disputed that the death penalty was an essential social measure. In the United States, Americans were enduring through Prohibition and the Great Depression. There were more executions in the 1930's than in any other time period in American history, an average of one hundred and sixty seven per year. In the 1950's, public feeling began to turn away from capital punishment. A lot of allied countries either got rid of or restricted the death penalty, and in the U.S., the quantity of executions decreased radically. There were over twelve hundred executions in the 1940's, seven hundred and fifteen in the 1950's, and the quantity fell to only one hundred and ninety one, from 1960 to 1976 (Introduction to the Death Penalty, 2010).

The 1960's brought confrontations to the basic legality of the death penalty. Prior to then, the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution were understood to permit the death penalty. Nevertheless, in the early 1960's, it was determined that the death penalty was a cruel and unusual punishment and consequently unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. In 1958, the Supreme Court decided in Trop v. Dulles (356 U.S. 86) that the understanding of the Eighth Amendment contained a developing standard of decency that marked the development of a maturing society. Even though Trop was not a death penalty case, abolitionists applied the Court's reasoning to executions and upheld that the United States had, in fact, advanced to a point that its standard of decency should no longer put up with the death penalty (Constitutionality of the Death Penalty in America, n.d.).

In the late 1960's, the Supreme Court began fine tuning the way the death penalty was administered. To this result, the Court heard two cases in 1968 that dealt with the discretion given to the prosecutor and the jury in capital cases. The first case was U.S. v. Jackson (390 U.S. 570), where the Supreme Court heard arguments regarding a provision of the federal kidnapping statute requiring that the death penalty be given only upon recommendation of a jury. The Court held that this practice was unconstitutional for the reason that it encouraged defendants to waive their right to a jury trial to make sure they would not get a death sentence (Constitutionality of the Death Penalty in America, n.d.).

The matter of the randomness of the death penalty was brought before the Supreme Court in 1972 in Furman v. Georgia (408 U.S. 238). Furman, bringing about an Eighth Amendment challenge, contended that capital cases resulted in random and impulsive sentencing. In nine separate opinions, and by a vote of five to four, the Court held that Georgia's death penalty law, which gave the jury total sentencing discretion without any leadership as to how to exercise that discretion, could consequence in arbitrary sentencing. The Court held that the system of punishment under the statute was consequently cruel and unusual and violated the Eighth Amendment. Therefore, in June of 1972, the Supreme Court efficiently voided for death penalty statutes, thus changing the sentences of over six hundred death row inmates around the nation and suspending the death penalty since existing statutes were no longer applicable (Constitutionality of the Death Penalty in America, n.d.).

The Supreme Court's decision in Furman v. Georgia did not rule the death penalty itself to be unconstitutional, just the precise laws by which it was applied. Therefore, the states rapidly began to write new death penalty laws intended to obey with the court's ruling. The first of the new death penalty laws shaped by the states of Texas, Florida and Georgia gave the courts wider judgment in applying the death penalty for precise crimes and presented for the present bifurcated trial system, in which a first trial decided guilt or innocence and a second trial settles on punishment. The Texas and Georgia laws permitted the jury to make a decision regarding punishment, while Florida's law left the sentence up to the trial judge. As a consequence of these decisions, twenty one states threw out their old obligatory death penalty laws and hundreds of death row prisoners had their sentences converted to life in prison (Recent Legal History of the Death Penalty in America, 2011).

In January 1977, convicted murderer Gary Gilmore became the first prisoner since 1976 put to death under the new death penalty laws. A total of eighty five prisoners, eighty three men and two women, in fourteen U.S. states were put to death during 2000. As of January 1998, thirty eight states and the federal government had death penalty laws in effect. As of 2000, the following states did not have death penalty laws: Alaska, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin (Recent Legal History of the Death Penalty in America, 2011).

The United States continues to be in the minority of countries around the world that still utilize the death as penalty for specific crimes. A lot of people see the penalty as barbaric and against American principles. Others see it as a very significant tool in fighting violent pre-meditated murder. There are two things have once again brought this subject to national debate. One is the release of some highly publicized studies that show a quantity of innocents had been put to death. The second is the matter of terrorism and the need to reprimand its perpetrators (The Death Penalty: Specific Issues, 2010).

Death penalty advocates often dispute that the execution of convicted murderers discourages other people from committing murder for fear that they will also be put to death, and also that murderers will be out of action. Once they are dead, they will have no more chance to commit other murders. Death penalty opponents dispute the deterrent effect of capital punishment, contending that few murderers realistically weigh the likelihood that they might face the death penalty prior to committing a murder. In addition, some research proposes that the death penalty augments the amount of homicides through a brutalization effect. Death penalty opponents do not quarrel that execution debilitates executed murders, but dispute that life imprisonment without the possibility of parole is just as incapacitating (The Death Penalty: Specific Issues, 2010).

Death penalty advocates rationalize capital punishment under the principle of an eye for an eye which is the belief that punishment should fit the crime. In particular, people who support capital punishment dispute that murderers should be put to death in retribution for their crimes and that such vengeance serves justice for murder victims and their survivors. Death penalty opponents stress the purity of life, quarrelling that killing is forever wrong whether by a person or by the state and that justice is best served by way of reconciliation (The Death Penalty: Specific Issues, 2010).

Opponents of the death penalty dispute that there is a hazard of putting to death innocent people, and cite real cases in which defendants were incorrectly convicted of, and occasionally put to death for, capital crimes. Death penalty opponents see current laws which limit the appeals process as equivalent to mounting the likelihood for putting to death innocent people. Death penalty proponents dispute that there are adequate protections against putting to death persons and that the hazard of executing the not guilty is minute (The Death Penalty: Specific Issues, 2010).