A Look into Capital Punishment in America Essay

The Annually 20, 000 murders in the USA and from that 300 people are sentenced to death and only 55 people are executed .Far as the states in USA concern only 19 sates carried out in 1976. In 1972 the Supreme Court declared that death penalty was unconstitutional, and in the

1972 - In Furman v. Georgia the Court rules that all existing death penalty laws violate the Constitution. The Court cited "arbitrariness" and racial imbalances in the application of death sentences. As a consequence, many states rewrite their death penalty laws.

Following the decline in the support of the death penalty, a moratorium on executions began in 1972 during the case Furman v. Georgia. Furman argued that the death penalty was arbitrary and violated the constitution (Mallicoat and Brown 255-280). In a five to four vote, the Supreme Court

The death penalty has been one of the most argumentive issues of our contemporary system of justice. In 1990, Tennessee was one of the first four states to exclude those with intellectual disabilities from the death penalty. It was the last Southern state to resume executions in the modern era. Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1978, states are permitted to have their own capital punishment laws. Capital punishment remains a legal sentence under Tennessee laws. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights requires that the death penalty is only implemented for the most serious crimes and never upon those who were under 18 years of age at the time of their crime. Although the death penalty is generally tolerated

The Gregg vs Georgia (1976) case study is important because the state of Georgia was in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that capital punishment (the death penalty) was constitutional so long as the procedures involved in its execution did not oppose the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution. U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Gregg vs Georgia which involved a prosecution for a double murder committed in the development of a robbery. The ruling was rejected the legal argument that capital punishment in and of itself establish “cruel and unusual punishment” and thus disregard the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution.

On March 9, 2011, the governor of Illinois signed into law a ban on the state’s usage of the death penalty. At the same time, he commuted the capital convictions of the fifteen inmates on Illinois’ death row to life in prison sentences. Prior to the implementation of this law, then-Governor George Ryan simply stopped signing death warrants, effectively creating an eleven-year moratorium on executions. These actions came about in the aftermath of a struggle lasting several years in which legislatures have tried to fix a broken capital punishment system.

Additionally, capital punishment and how it is practiced has been greatly shaped by several Supreme Court rulings. In the 1972 case of Furman v. Georgia, it was determined that the death penalty sentencing as it was then carried out violated due process rights and was considered cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment, and in 1976 it was decided that state laws that mandated the death penalty for all first-degree murders were ruled unconstitutional. Perhaps one of the most important court cases regarding capital punishment is the 1976 case of Gregg v. Georgia, which reinstated the death penalty, making it acceptable as long as the sentencing process is reasonable. This Supreme Court ruling also developed an important two-staged process for appropriate death penalty sentencing with the determination of guilt or innocence being decided in the first stage and if found guilty, a second stage follows which involves a kind of mini-trial for sentencing options which weigh the aggravating and mitigating circumstances of the crime. Executing mentally retarded people was ruled cruel and unusual punishment and therefore unconstitutional by the Court in 2002, and in 2005 the Court made capital punishment for juvenile offenders illegal. Furthermore, other Supreme Court cases have ruled that capital punishment may only be imposed when it is reasonably

“In a monumental 1972 decision by the US Supreme Court, all but a few death penalty statutes in the United States were declared unconstitutional” (Radelet & Borg, 2000,

Virginia (1996) in this case Daryl Reynard Atkins and William Jones abducted Eric Nesbitt and shot him 8 times. They both ended up testifying during Atkin’s trial but each of them blamed the other for the killing. In the end Atkins was the one who got charged because of his low IQ. He was later charged for the killing and was sentenced to death. The Supreme Court of Virginia affirmed the death sentence because he was sentenced to death as well as life imprisonment all just because of his IQ score. The United States Supreme Court reversed this, it stated that “that the constitution places a substantive restriction on the state’s power to take the life of a mentally retarded offender.” When they reached this conclusion, the court relied on three reasonings: (1.) Prevailing standards of decency forbid the execution of mentally retarded defendants; (2.) mentally retarded defendants “ do not act with the level of moral culpability that characterizes the most serious adult criminal conduct” and therefore do not warrant a death sentence; and (3) mentally retarded defendants are less capable of assisting in and securing the type of defense required in capital cases and therefore present an increased chance of death sentences being placed on them. Even though they weren’t the ones who most likely committed the offense. There are facts that compel the conclusion that executing juvenile offenders is cruel and unusual

The U.S. Supreme Court decided, on January 27, 2004, to evaluate whether executing sixteen and seventeen year-olds violates the Constitution’s ban on 'cruel and unusual punishment.' The evaluation comes after the Missouri Supreme Court overturned the death sentence of 17 year-old Christopher Simmons. The United States Supreme Court ruled, in March 2005, that the death penalty for those who had done their crimes before they were 18 years old was cruel and unusual punishment and henceforth barred by the Constitution. Four justices have called the juvenile death penalty 'inconsistent with evolving standards of decency in a civilized society' (Juveniles and the Death Penalty).

From 1999-2003, thirty-five juveniles were sentenced to death. Also note that just seven states have executed juvenile offenders since 1976. Since 2000, only three countries have executed juvenile offenders. These include the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran and Pakistan. This making the U.S. the only country to still have it because all three other countries have either abolished it or are in the process of abolishing it since 2000.

The first established death penalty laws date as far back as the Eighteenth Century B.C. in the Code of King Hammurabi of Babylon, which codified the death penalty for 25 different crimes ("History of the Death Penalty" 1). Executions back then relied on more torturous methods without regard to the executed. As the use of the Death Penalty was issued out, its popularity spread throughout the neighboring countries and has become more refined for modern use. In June of 2004, “New York’s death penalty law was declared unconstitutional by the state’s high court” (“History…” 3). Between the early 1950’s and late 1970’s, the death penalty became suspended for going against the constitution, only to get reinstated after the brief pausing period. Having to take a pausing period to consider options for taking a human life merely demonstrates how confused and undecided the supreme court can be when it comes to choosing the route of convicts. According to the Bureau of Justice, before the Kennedy v. Louisiana case of 2008, in Texas, “..the only other penalty punishable by death besides murder is the rape of a child under 14..” (“History...” 16). No convictions have happened since establishment, yet the supreme court finds it okay to take a human life despite the convict not taking one themselves. While rape is punishable by multiple years or sentences depending on severity in Texas, deciding to take the life of a human being when no murder has been conducted shows how unfairly a court

The American people have been executing children in the pursuit of justice for more than three and one half centuries, beginning with the earliest days of Plymouth Colony. The most recent executions of juvenile offenders occurred in April and May of 1998. This centuries-old system of death for children’s crimes has always had major flaws, and the post-1972 modern era is little better. However, it was not until the last decade that American courts and scholars stumbled across this odd subtopic within the death penalty system. Now after fifteen years of debating, legislating, and deciding cases about the death penalty for offenders who commit crimes while under age

No man should be able to “play God.” They way that the world works today, people are getting themselves in trouble by trying to be that powerful. This is many of the reasons of why so many other countries have abolished the death penalty according to Eric Neumayer. Take for example Bin Laden or Hitler or even Castro, all of these men all wanted to have total power and they got it however, Because they had total power their people turned on them and took away their power. If the government continues to have this much power, the people of America will have no say in any choices in what happens in the country. The government needs to have less power.

Capital punishment has clashed for a long time in the forum of public opinion in state legislatures and most recently in courts. In 1972, the case of Furman vs. Georgia (Appendix 1) reached the supreme