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The History Of Juvenile Delinquency And Capital Punishment

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History of Juvenile Delinquency and Capital Punishment The United States learned to use the death penalty as a form of punishment from their parent country the United Kingdom (Marcus). The first record of capital punishment in America was in the colony of Jamestown in 1608. George Kendall accused John Ratcliff of violent acts towards Indian girls. Ratcliff responded by accusing Kendall of being a Spanish spy and had him executed by firing squad (Adcock). With the country's new freedom and the Constitution, along with the Bill of Rights, the founders left out an amendment directly addressing capital punishment. This left it up to each state to decide their own stances, resulting in America’s use of capital punishment to vary depending on the state. The Supreme Court did not address Capital Punishment until the 1970’s with the court cases McGautha v. California and Furman v. Georgia. The McGautha v. California case ruled that capital punishment is a fair, just punishment upholding the philosophy that it is okay under the constitution. One year later the Supreme Court overturned McGautha v. California with the Furman v. Georgia case. In Furman v. Georgia, the defendants were Furman for murder, Jackson, and Branch for rape. The ruling was that capital punishment was cruel and unusual punishment, and it violated the eighth amendment (Unknown). This ruling meant that capital punishment was unconstitutional, but the nine judges of the Supreme Court were unable to come to a

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