preview

Death Penalty Controversy

Better Essays

According to the death penalty center (2018), “When European settlers came to the new world, they brought the practice of capital punishment. The first recorded execution in the new colonies was that of Captain George Kendall in the Jamestown colony of Virginia in 1608.” What is capital punishment? You may ask… well as per Roger Hood, writer of the Encyclopedia Britannica is “also called the death penalty, [and] is the execution of an offender sentenced to death after conviction by a court of law of a criminal offense,” (2017). In other words, capital punishment is the killing of a criminal who has already been tried based on the evidence presented during conviction.
The death penalty has caused a huge amount of controversy in the United States …show more content…

States were reducing their execution numbers as well as closed down their execution facilities. “In 1834, Pennsylvania became the first state to move executions away from the public eye and carrying them out in correctional facilities,” (“Death penalty information center”, 2018). Shortly following this, Michigan was the first state to abolish the death penalty for all crimes except treason, and eventually, Wisconsin and Rhode Island abolished the death penalty completely, “(“Death penalty information center”, 2018). In regard to the constitution, prior to the 1960s, the fifth and eighth amendments were interpreted as permitting the death penalty, but abolitionist argued that under the eighth amendment it was “cruel and unusual punishment,” (“Death penalty information”, 2018). An example of this ruling is in Furman v. Georgia, 1972, where William Furman was caught stealing from a home and when attempting to escape he accidentally killed a resident of the house with his gun. Georgia state’s supreme court ruling stated that the death penalty was unconstitutional under the eighth and fourteenth amendment. Because of this case, “the death penalty was ruled illegal within the United States in 1976,” (Bedau, …show more content…

Georgia is only one example of the nation attempting to figure out if the death penalty is ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ which violates the eighth amendment. However, according to the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law school (2018), the supreme court states that the death penalty does not violate the eighth amendment, but it does have “certain procedural aspects regarding when a jury may use the death penalty and how it must be carried out. But, this case was also the reason a ten-year moratorium was instated on the death penalty, (Del Valle, 2017). Nevertheless, the moratorium quickly ended five years later with the execution of Gary Gilmore, who was sentenced to death for murder and theft, (Del Valle, 2017). Another instance where the death penalty was questioned was during the case, Coker v. Virginia, where Ehrlich Anthony Coker escaped from prison, broke into a house, raped a woman and stole her vehicle. Conversely, this case was brought to the supreme court because “although rape deserves serious punishment, the death penalty, which is unique in its severity and irrevocability, is an excessive penalty for the rapist who, as such and as opposed to the murderer, does not unjustifiably take human life,” (White,

Get Access