|
The following is a brief summary of the history of capital punishment,
with an emphasis on developments in the Webmasters note: This page is copied from the following website and is adjusted by Death Row Speaks. Our source: http://teacher.deathpenaltyinfo.msu.edu/c/about/history/contents.htm Navigate this page by pressing the links below. History
History The
first established death penalty laws date as far back as the Eighteenth
Century B.C. in the Code of King Hammaurabi of In
the Tenth Century A.D., hanging became the usual method of execution in The
number of capital crimes in Laws regarding 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 did not go into effect until years later. The New York Colony instituted the Duke's Laws of 1665. Under these laws, offenses such as striking one's mother or father, or denying the "true God," were punishable by death. (Randa, 1997)
Early
Questions About the Death Penalty Those
who did not support the death penalty found support in the writings of
European theorists Montesquieu, Voltaire and Bentham, and English
Quakers John Bellers and John Howard. However, it was Cesare Beccaria's
1767 essay, On Crimes and Punishment, that had an especially strong
impact throughout the world. In the essay, Beccaria theorized that there
was no justification for the state's taking of a life. The essay gave
abolitionists an authoritative voice and renewed energy, one result of
which was the abolition of the death penalty in American
intellectuals as well were influenced by Beccaria. The first attempted
reforms of the death penalty in the Dr.
Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and founder
of the Pennsylvania Prison Society, challenged the belief that the death
penalty served as a deterrent. In fact, Rush was an early believer in
the "brutalization effect." He held that having a death
penalty actually increased criminal conduct. Rush gained the support of
Benjamin Franklin and Philadelphia Attorney General William Bradford.
Bradford, who would later become the U.S. Attorney General, believed
that the death penalty should be retained, but that it was not a
deterrent to certain crimes. He subsequently led
Changes
in Death Penalty Laws In
the early part of the nineteenth century, many states reduced the number
of their capital crimes and built state penitentiaries. In 1834, In
1846, Although
some During
the Civil War, opposition to the death penalty waned, as more attention
was given to the anti-slavery movement. After the war, new developments
in the means of executions emerged. The electric chair was introduced at
the end of the century. Early
and Mid-Twentieth Century From
1907 to 1917, six states completely outlawed the death penalty and three
limited it to the rarely committed crimes of treason and first degree
murder of a law enforcement official. However, this reform was
short-lived. There was a frenzied atmosphere in the In
1924, the use of cyanide gas was introduced, as From
the 1920s to the 1940s, there was a resurgence in the use of the death
penalty. This was due, in part, to the writings of criminologists, who
argued that the death penalty was a necessary social measure. In the In
the 1950s, public sentiment began to turn away from capital punishment.
Many allied nations either abolished or limited the death penalty, and
in the Constitutionality
of the Death Penalty in The
1960s brought challenges to the fundamental legality of the death
penalty. Before then, the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to
the United States Constitution were interpreted as permitting the death
penalty. However, in the early 1960s, it was suggested that the death
penalty was a "cruel and unusual" punishment and therefore
unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. In 1958, the Supreme Court
decided in Trop v. Dulles (356 In
the late 1960s, the Supreme Court began "fine tuning" the way
the death penalty was administered. To this effect, the Court heard two
cases in 1968 dealing 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
imposed only upon recommendation of a jury. The Court held that this
practice was unconstitutional because it encouraged defendants to waive
their right to a jury trial to ensure they would not receive a death
sentence. The
other 1968 case was Witherspoon v.
In
9 separate opinions, and by a vote of 5 to 4, the Court held that Although
the separate opinions by Justices Brennan and Marshall stated that the
death penalty itself was unconstitutional, the overall holding in Furman
was that the specific death penalty statutes were unconstitutional. With
that holding, the Court essentially opened the door to states to rewrite
their death penalty statutes to eliminate the problems cited in Furman.
Advocates of capital punishment began proposing new statutes that they
believed would end arbitrariness in capital sentencing. The states were
led by Other
states sought to limit that discretion by providing sentencing
guidelines for the judge and jury when deciding whether to impose death.
The guidelines allowed for the introduction of aggravating and
mitigating factors in determining sentencing. These guided discretion
statutes were approved in 1976 by the Supreme Court in Gregg v. In
addition to sentencing guidelines, three other procedural reforms were
approved by the Court in Gregg. The first was bifurcated trials, in
which there are separate deliberations for the guilt and penalty phases
of the trial. Only after the jury has determined that the defendant is
guilty of capital murder does it decide in a second trial whether the
defendant should be sentenced to death or given a lesser sentence of
prison time. Another reform was the practice of automatic appellate
review of convictions and sentence. The final procedural reform from
Gregg was proportionality review, a practice that helps the state to
identify and eliminate sentencing disparities. Through this process, the
state appellate court can compare the sentence in the case being
reviewed with other cases within the state, to see if it is
disproportionate. Because
these reforms were accepted by the Supreme Court, some states wishing to
reinstate the death penalty included them in their new death penalty
statutes. The Court, however, did not require that each of the reforms
be present in the new statutes. Therefore, some of the resulting new
statutes include variations on the procedural reforms found in Gregg. Limitations on the Death Penalty Limitations
within the After
World War II, many European countries abandoned or restricted the death
after signing and ratifying the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
and subsequent human rights treaties. The In
1977, the United States Supreme Court held in Coker v. Georgia (433
Mental Illness and Mental Retardation In
1986, the Supreme Court banned the execution of insane persons in Ford
v. Wainwright (477
Race
became the focus of the criminal justice debate when the Supreme Court
held in Batson v. Kentucky (476 U.S. 79 (1977)) that a prosecutor who
exercises his or her perogatory challenges to remove a disproportionate
number of citizens of the same race in selecting a jury is required to
show neutral reasons for the strikes. Race
was again in the forefront when the Supreme Court decided a 1987 case,
McCleskey v. Kemp (481
In
the late 1980s, the Supreme Court decided three cases regarding the
constitutionality of executing juvenile offenders. In The
following year, the Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment does
not prohibit the death penalty for crimes committed at age sixteen or
seventeen. (Stanford v. Kentucky, and Wilkins v. Missouri (collectively,
492 In
1992, the
Current
Issues and Topics The
Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of executing someone who
claimed actual innocence in Herrera v. Collins (506 U.S. 390 (1993)).
Although the Court left open the possibility that the Constitution bars
the execution of someone who conclusively demonstrates that he or she is
actually innocent, the Court noted that such cases would be very rare.
The Court held that, in the absence of other constitutional violations,
new evidence of innocence is no reason for federal courts to order a new
trial. The Court also held that an innocent inmate could seek to prevent
his execution through the clemency process, which, historically, has
been "the 'fail safe' in our justice system." Herrera was not
granted clemency, and he was executed in 1993. Support
for the death penalty has fluctuated throughout the century. According
to Religion
and the Death Penalty In
the 1970s, the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), representing
more then 10 million conservative Christians and 47 denominations, and
the Moral Majority, were among the Christian groups supporting the death
penalty. NAE's successor, the Christian Coalition, also supports the
death penalty. Today, Fundamentalist and Pentecostal churches, as well
as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), support
the death penalty — typically on biblical grounds, specifically citing
the Old Testament (Bedau, 1997). Although formerly also a supporter of
capital punishment, the Roman Catholic Church now opposes the death
penalty. In addition, most Protestant denominations, including Baptists,
Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, and the United
Church of Christ, oppose the death penalty. Women
have, historically, not been subject to the death penalty at the same
rate as men. From the first woman executed in the U.S., Jane Champion,
who was hanged in James City, Virginia in 1632, to the 1998 executions
of Karla Faye Tucker in Texas and Judi Buenoano in Florida, women have
constituted only 3% of U.S. executions. In fact, only five women have
been executed since the death penalty was reinstated. (O'Shea, 1999,
with updates by DPIC). In
addition to the death penalty laws in many states, the federal
government has also employed capital punishment for certain federal
offenses, such as murder of a government official, kidnapping resulting
in death, running of a large-scale drug enterprise, and treason. When
the Supreme Court struck down state death penalty statutes in Furman,
the federal death penalty statutes suffered from the same constitutional
infirmities that the state statutes did. As a result, death sentences
under the old federal death penalty statutes have not been upheld. A
new federal death penalty statute was enacted in 1988 for murder in the
course of a drug-kingpin conspiracy. The statute was modeled on the
post-Gregg statutes that the Supreme Court has approved. In
1994, President Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law
Enforcement Act that expanded the federal death penalty to some 60
crimes, some of which do not involve murder. There have been three
federal executions under these laws: Timothy McVeigh and Juan Garza in
June of 2001, and Louis Jones in March 2003. In
response to the Oklahoma City Bombing, President Clinton signed the
Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. The Act, which
affects both state and federal prisoners, restricts review in federal
courts by establishing tighter filing deadlines, limiting the
opportunity for evidentiary hearings, and ordinarily allowing only a
single habeas corpus filing in federal court. Proponents of the death
penalty argue that this streamlining will speed up the death penalty
process and significantly reduce its cost, although others fear that
quicker, more limited federal review may increase the risk of executing
innocent defendants. (Bohm, 1999 and Schabas, 1997) In
April 1999, the United Nations Human Rights Commission passed a
resolution supporting a worldwide moratorium on executions. The
resolution calls on countries which have not abolished the death penalty
to restrict its use, including not imposing it on juvenile offenders and
limiting the number of offenses for which it can be imposed. As
of August 2003, 112 countries are abolitionist in law or practice,
leaving just 83 countries active in the use of the death penalty. Of the
more than 1500 executions to take place in 2002, 81% were carried out by
the Below
are lists of countries with and without the death penalty, compiled and
last updated by Amnesty International January 4, 2003 (http://web.amnesty.org/pages/deathpenalty-countries-eng). AFGHANISTAN,
ALGERIA, ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA, BAHAMAS, BAHRAIN, BANGLADESH, BARBADOS,
BELARUS, BELIZE, BENIN, BOTSWANA, BURUNDI, CAMEROON, CHAD, CHINA,
COMOROS, CONGO (Democratic Republic), CUBA, DOMINICA, EGYPT, EQUATORIAL
GUINEA, ERITREA, ETHIOPIA, GABON, GHANA, GUATEMALA, GUINEA, GUYANA,
INDIA, INDONESIA, IRAN, IRAQ, JAMAICA, JAPAN, JORDAN, KAZAKSTAN, KENYA,
KOREA (North), KOREA (South), KUWAIT, KYRGYZSTAN, LAOS, LEBANON,
LESOTHO, LIBERIA, LIBYA, MALAWI, MALAYSIA, MAURITANIA, MONGOLIA, MOROCCO,
MYANMAR, NIGERIA, OMAN, PAKISTAN, PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY, PHILIPPINES,
QATAR, RWANDA, SAINT CHRISTOPHER & NEVIS, SAINT LUCIA, SAINT VINCENT
& GRENADINES, SAUDI ARABIA, SIERRA LEONE, SINGAPORE, SOMALIA, SUDAN,
SWAZILAND, SYRIA, TAIWAN, TAJIKISTAN, TANZANIA, THAILAND, TRINIDAD AND
TOBAGO, TUNISIA, UGANDA, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
UZBEKISTAN, VIET NAM, YEMEN, ZAMBIA, ZIMBABWE Countries
that are abolitionist in practice ARMENIA,
BHUTAN, BRUNEI DARUSSALAM, BURKINA FASO, CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC, CONGO
(Republic), GAMBIA, GRENADA, MADAGASCAR, MALDIVES, MALI, NAURU, NIGER,
PAPUA NEW GUINEA, RUSSIAN FEDERATION, SAMOA, SENEGAL, SRI LANKA,
SURINAME, TOGO, TONGA Countries
that are retentionist only for exceptional crimes ALBANIA,
ARGENTINA, BOLIVIA, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA, BRAZIL, CHILE, COOK ISLANDS, EL
SALVADOR, FIJI, GREECE, ISRAEL, LATVIA, MEXICO, PERU, TURKEY Countries
that are abolitionist for all crimes ANDORRA, ANGOLA, AUSTRALIA, AUSTRIA, AZERBAIJAN, BELGIUM, BULGARIA, CAMBODIA, CANADA, CAPE VERDE, COLOMBIA, COSTA RICA, COTE D'IVOIRE, CROATIA, CYPRUS, CZECH REPUBLIC, DENMARK, DJIBOUTI, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, EAST TIMOR, ECUADOR, ESTONIA, FINLAND, FRANCE, GEORGIA, GERMANY, GUINEA-BISSAU, HAITI, HONDURAS, HUNGARY, ICELAND, IRELAND, ITALY, KIRIBATI, LIECHTENSTEIN, LITHUANIA, LUXEMBOURG, MACEDONIA (former Yugoslav Republic), MALTA, MARSHALL ISLANDS, MAURITIUS, MICRONESIA (Federated States), MOLDOVA, MONACO, MOZAMBIQUE, NAMIBIA, NEPAL, NETHERLANDS, NEW ZEALAND, NICARAGUA, NORWAY, PALAU, PANAMA, PARAGUAY, POLAND, PORTUGAL, ROMANIA, SAN MARINO, SAO TOME AND PRINCIPE, SERBIA AND MONTENEGRO, SEYCHELLES, SLOVAK REPUBLIC, SLOVENIA, SOLOMON ISLANDS, SOUTH AFRICA, SPAIN, SWEDEN, SWITZERLAND, TURKMENISTAN, TUVALU, UKRAINE, UNITED KINGDOM, URUGUAY, VANUATU, VATICAN CITY STATE, VENEZUELA
Sources Amnesty
International, "List of Abolitionist and Retentionist Countries,"
http://www.web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/index/ACT500052000 D.
Baker, "A Descriptive Profile and Socio-Historical Analysis of
Female Executions in the R.
Bohm, "Deathquest: An Introduction to the Theory and Practice of
Capital Punishment in the "The
Death Penalty in K.
O'Shea, "Women and the Death Penalty in the United States,
1900-1998," Praeger 1999. W.
Schabas, "The Abolition of the Death Penalty in International Law,"
"Society's
Final Solution: A History and Discussion of the Death Penalty," L.
Randa, editor, University Press of America, 1997. V.
Streib, "Death Penalty For Female Offenders January 1973 to June
1999," Additional
sources
|
