The ' Legal Lynching The Death Penalty And American 's Future `` By Jesse L. Jackson

Capital punishment in America developed as a result of the influence of the British when they settled in America. They brought with them the laws that include capital punishment. The earliest form of death penalty ever recorded was that of Captain Georg Kendall in the year 1608 in Jamestown Colony, Virginia. Kendall’s execution was attributed to his being a spy of Spain. Captain Georg Kendall was a member of the first council that was appointed in Jamestown in Virginia colony. In that year, he was executed by a firing squad making him the first person to have ever been sentenced to death in the United states.

“I think capital punishment works great. Every killer you kill never kills again” (Brainy Quotes). As far back as the death penalty began, it was established as a punishment in the United States in 1608. Britain influenced America's use of the death penalty more than any other country had. When European settlers came to the new world, the settlers practiced the capital punishment. The first execution was set in the new colony of Jamestown Virginia. Although some may say the death penalty is wrong and cruel, the penalty is necessary so that people in the world or society feel like justice is being made.

The death penalty was first developed in the Eighteenth Century B.C. by King Hammurabi who mentioned death as a punishment over 20 times. In Britain around the Tenth Century A.D., the method of hanging was extremely common. Other methods developed over time such as boiling, beheading, burning at the stake and quartering. In order to be ‘executed’ the criminals would commit capital offenses such as not being honest to a law officer or treason. As time passed, the amount of criminals executed grew larger every year and the government in England knew something had to change. Therefore, the death penalty was reduced by about 45%. The first usage of the death penalty recorded in America was the death of Captain George Kendall in 1608. He was caught as a spy for Spain which lead to his violent death. In 1612, the Governor of Virginia, Sir Thomas Dale began the Divine, Moral and Martial Laws, which allowed the death penalty for multiple small crimes. The death penalty became inactive in the early

In the United States, the use of the death penalty continues to be a controversial issue. Every election year, politicians, wishing to appeal to the moral sentiments of voters, routinely compete with each other as to who will be toughest in extending the death penalty to those persons who have been convicted of first-degree murder. Both proponents and opponents of capital punishment present compelling arguments to support their claims. Often their arguments are made on different interpretations of what is moral in a just society. In this essay, I intend to present major arguments of those who support the death penalty and those who are opposed to state sanctioned executions application . However, I do intend to fairly and accurately

The Reverend Jesse L. Jackson Sr., the former presidential candidate, writes “Legal Lynching The Death Penalty And American’s Future”. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr., wrote this book in the company of his son Jesse L. Jackson, Jr., a United State congressman from Illinois since 1995, and Nation writer Bruce Shapiro a contributing editor at National and a national correspondent for Salon.com, and the professor at Yale University. In this book Jackson’s keep his moderated argument about the death penalty. There are nine chapters in this book, each chapter tackle a different facet of the argument. This

The use of capital punishment in the U.S. is a growing concern for most American citizens. According to statistics, seventy percent of Americans are in support of the death penalty, while only thirty percent are against it. These statistics show that few people are against capital punishment (“Fact” 1). With the use of the death penalty growing the controversy is becoming more heated. With only twelve states left not enforcing it the resistance is becoming futile (“Fact” 4). Many debates have been made and even clauses have been invoked, such as, the “Cruel and Unusual Clause” that was invoked by the Supreme Court in 1962 (Meltsner 179). The use of death as a punishment has been viewed as “cruel

Capital punishment, the state imposed penalty of death, continues to be one of the most controversial issues in contemporary American public policy. Since the earliest days of its employment in the colonial era until today, citizens have struggles with the issue of when and under what circumstances the taking of a human life by the state can be morally or legally justified. For some opponents of the death penalty, the simple answer is that the taking of a human life is always morally and ethically wrong, even when conducted under the auspices of state authority as a legal punishment. In contrast, proponents of capital punishment have contended with equal fervor that the death penalty is morally justified as a form of retributive justice,

Britain influenced Americans to use capital punishment because new settlers brought it here.“The first recorded execution in the American colonies occurred in Jamestown,Virginia in 1608 when George Kendall was shot

The very first legal executions came in the United States was during the Revolutionary War against Great Britain. British soldiers hung the first person to die by the death penalty, Nathan Hale, for espionage (Foley 167). The reason that I have included this history is to prove that if something has been working, why stop

“The death penalty is not about whether people deserve to die for the crimes they commit. The real question of capital punishment in this country is, Do we deserve to kill?” In 1607 the British left the United Kingdom to the new world now known as the United States. When the British went to the United States they brought over the death penalty with them. When the British came to the United States there had been some spies that followed them from the European countries. They ended up finding a guy named Kendall who was a spy from spain. The first execution occurred in Virginia where they executed Kendall. After the first execution, it became a regular thing in the new world. People were executed for stealing grapes, trading with the Indians and killing chickens.

While the topic can be overwhelming and complex, it is important to study the racist institution of the death penalty because execution is the ultimate expression of which individuals are valued by our society and which are considered dispensable. What the US expresses through its executions carries some racist undertones when we look at the races of the persons being executed, but it takes on a clearly racial direction when we consider the race of the original murder victim. For example, "the most comprehensive study of the death penalty found that killers of whites were eleven times more likely to be condemned to death than killers of African- Americans."3 On the flip side, "only 31 of the over 18,000 executions in this country's history involved a white person being punished for killing a Black person."4 In capital punishment, we find the modernday counterpart to lynching. Of course, lynching often meant sporadic acts of individual racism. Selective killing today is an official, bureaucratized act of the state and therefore an official statement of what our government stands for. And what the government stands for is the most complete disempowerment possible - death - for a large number of Black individuals.

Reverend Jesse L. Jackson Sr., the former presidential candidate of the United States of America, writes Legal Lynching The Death Penalty And American’s Future. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr., wrote this book in the company of his son Jesse L. Jackson, Jr., a United State congressman from Illinois since 1995, Additionally, Nation writer Bruce Shapiro, a contributing editor at National and a national correspondent for Salon.com, and the professor at Yale University. In this book Jackson’s helped to create the book and his moderated argument about the death penalty. There are nine chapters in this book; each chapter tackles a different facet of the argument. This book describes the history of the death penalty, myths, lies and deterrence, bureaucratic nightmare involving defense lawyers sleeping at trial, “A Question of Innocent,” “False Closure: Victims Rights Versus Vengeance Rights”, “Social of Executioners” and “The Death Penalty and American’s Future: Moratorium and Beyond. The authors begin with the proposal of a moratorium and could lead to the eventual cessation of capital punishment.

Britain influenced America’s use of the death penalty more than any other country. When European settlers came to the new world (now the United States). They brought capital punishment. The first recorded execution in the new colonies was that of Captain George Kendall in the Jamestown colony of Virginia in 1608. He was killed for being a spy for Spain. Death penalty laws were different from colony to colony. It was Cesare Beccaria’s 1767 essay On Crimes and Punishment that had a strong impact throughout the world on the justification for the state’s taking of a life1.

In Stephen Bright’s article, “The Death Penalty as the Answer to Crime: Costly, Counterproductive, and Corrupting” Bright asserts that capital punishment does not work because it is racially biased, the quality of the lawyers and attorneys supplied by the state to poor defendants is unfair, and that the law system currently in place does not accomplish its true goals. Bright defends his claim with logos and ethos by examining the opinions of judges and district attorneys, and by describing experience within the fields of human rights and law himself in order to persuade the reader to take up more cases for those on death row. Given the language used in this article Bright is writing to an audience with intermediate to professional experience within the field of law, and a willingness to adopt a new idea on the constitutionality behind the death penalty.

In America, capital punishment was first implemented with the arrival of early European settlers as a form of