Capital Punishment

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Kaplan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
State Government ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
The United States ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Criminal Offenses ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
Criminal Charge ◽  
Modern Era

The death penalty, also referred to as capital punishment, is the process whereby a state government orders a sentence of death for a person found guilty of a particular set of criminal offenses. In the United States, the primary capital crime is first-degree murder with an additional aggravating factor, usually called a “special circumstance” (e.g., murder of a law enforcement officer). Capital punishment is a complex process that includes a criminal charge, an involved legal process, sentencing, special “death row” prison housing, post-conviction appeals, and the ultimate execution of the defendant. Persons sentenced to death are called condemned. Execution refers specifically to the process in which the defendant is killed. Capital punishment has been practiced throughout human history, with considerable variation across eras and regions. In the last 50 years, the use of capital punishment has declined across the globe, and there are relatively few countries that use it regularly as a form of punishment, most notably China. Some countries have abolished the death penalty completely, such as all member states of the European Union. Most other countries have seen a decline in its use. For instance, only 31 out of 50 states in the United States currently have death penalty statutes (there are also federal death penalty statutes, which are rarely used). The other 19 U.S. states are referred to as “abolitionist.” The “modern era” of capital punishment in the United States was spurred by two important Supreme Court cases. The Furman v. Georgia (1972) decision ruled that arbitrariness in the application of the death penalty deemed its use unconstitutional. The reversal of that ruling four years later in Gregg v. Georgia (1976) reestablished the death penalty in America, and experts refer to the modern era as 1976 to the present.

The Use of the Death Penalty

1969 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter C. Reckless
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
The United States ◽  
Death Sentence ◽  
Dramatic Reduction ◽  
Public Sentiment ◽  
Discernible Effect ◽  
The World ◽  
Important Trend

Undoubtedly the most important trend in capital punishment has been the dramatic reduction in the number of offenses statutorily punishable by the death penalty. About two hundred years ago England had over two hundred offenses calling for the death penalty; it now has four. Some countries have abolished capital punishment completely; a few retain it for unusual offenses only. The trend throughout the world, even in the great number of countries that retain the death penalty, is definitely toward a de facto, not a de jure, form of abolition. In the United States, where the death penalty is possible in three-fourths of the states, the number of executions has declined from 199 in 1935 to an average of less than three in the last four years. This change is related to public sentiment against the use of the death penalty and even more directly to the unwillingness of juries and courts to impose a first-degree sentence. The increasing willingness of governors to commute a death sentence and of courts to hear appeals also contributes to this decline. A review of the evidence indicates that use of the death penalty has no discernible effect on the commission of capital offenses (especially murder).

Public Opinion and Capital Punishment: A Close Examination of the Views of Abolitionists and Retentionists

1983 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phoebe C. Ellsworth ◽  
Lee Ross
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Response Rate ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
Self Image ◽  
Legal Implications

A survey designed to examine the attitudinal and informational bases of people's opinions about the death penalty was administered to 500 Northern California residents (response rate = 96 percent). Of these, 58.8 percent were proponents of capital punishment, 30.8 percent were opponents, and 10.4 percent were undecided. When asked whether they favored mandatory, discretionary, or no death penalty for various crimes, respondents tended to treat these options as points on a scale of strength of belief, with mandatory penalties favored for the most serious crimes, rather than considering the questions of objectivity and fairness that have influenced the United States Supreme Court's considerations of these options. For no crime did a majority favor execution of all those convicted, even when a mandatory penalty was endorsed. Respondents were generally ignorant on factual issues related to the death penalty, and indicated that if their factual beliefs (in deterrence) were incorrect, their attitude would not be influenced. When asked about their reasons for favoring or opposing the death penalty, respondents tended to endorse all reasons consistent with their attitudes, indicating that the attitude does not stem from a set of reasoned beliefs, but may be an undifferenti ated, emotional reflection of one's ideological self-image. Opponents favored due process guarantees more than did Proponents. A majority of respondents said they would need more evidence to convict if a case was capital. Theoretical and legal implications of the results are discussed.

The Politics of the Death Penalty

2009 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 925-928
Author(s):  
Marie Gottschalk
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
The United States ◽  
High Point ◽  
Opinion Polls

The death penalty is declining in the United States. The number of people executed each year has fallen by about half since the late 1990s. Opinion polls show support for capital punishment is waning. It now stands at about two-thirds, down from a high point of 86% in 1995, according to Gallup polls (p. 173).

The Rise, Fall, and Afterlife of the Death Penalty in the United States

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 299-315
Author(s):  
Carol S. Steiker ◽  
Jordan M. Steiker
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Justice System ◽  
The United States ◽  
History Of ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
History Of Race ◽  
Western Democracies

This review addresses four key issues in the modern (post-1976) era of capital punishment in the United States. First, why has the United States retained the death penalty when all its peer countries (all other developed Western democracies) have abolished it? Second, how should we understand the role of race in shaping the distinctive path of capital punishment in the United States, given our country's history of race-based slavery and slavery's intractable legacy of discrimination? Third, what is the significance of the sudden and profound withering of the practice of capital punishment in the past two decades? And, finally, what would abolition of the death penalty in the United States (should it ever occur) mean for the larger criminal justice system?

Executing Humanity: Legal Consciousness and Capital Punishment in the United States, 1915–1940

2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 929-976
Author(s):  
Daniel LaChance
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Legal Consciousness ◽  
Abstract Entity ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Collective Imagination

From the 1830s to the 1930s, elites across the United States increasingly privatized executions and standardized execution protocols. These changes reflected and reinforced a more bureaucratic image of the state as an abstract entity run by professionals operating in rule-bound roles rather than particular actors governing in an unsystematic way. After this period of change, the aesthetics of the execution ceremony had so thoroughly changed that the death penalty had the potential to inspire critiques of the modern state as cold, detached, and callous. It rarely did, however. Changes to state killing threatened to diminish the recognition of human dignity in the nation's execution chambers were countered by melodramatic popular renderings of executions that preserved their sacred, traditional character. Toward the end of this period of change, from 1915 to 1940, playwrights, screenwriters, and journalists maintained executions as events in which the humanity of the state that killed and the condemned who died was constantly foregrounded, even as execution modes and protocols became rationalized and machine-like. Reflecting this ethos, images of condemned men in the nation's collective imagination became disproportionately white.

American Capital Punishment in Comparative Perspective

2011 ◽  
Vol 36 (04) ◽  
pp. 1033-1061 ◽  
Author(s):  
David T. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
American History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Local Version ◽  
Western Nations ◽  
Western Democracies

It is often said that American capital punishment fulfills no purposes, serves no functions, and possesses no coherent rationale. In Peculiar Institution: America's Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition (2010), David Garland argues that American capital punishment is functional, meaningful, and effective, especially in the cultural realm of death penalty discourse. He also demonstrates that America's radically local version of democracy helps explain why the death penalty has persisted in the United States long after it disappeared in other Western democracies and that many of the peculiar forms through which American capital punishment is now administered have been designed to deny association with the lynchings that have occurred in American history. Garland arrives at these conclusions by comparing capital punishment in contemporary America with death penalty systems from the American past and from other Western nations. This essay argues that comparison with Asia further illuminates what is peculiar—and ordinary—in American capital punishment.

scholarly journals Capital Sentencing: The Effect of Adding Aggravators to Death Penalty Statutes in Pennsylvania

2004 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Schultz Newman ◽  
Eric Rayz ◽  
Scott Eric Friedman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Statistical Study ◽  
The United States ◽  
Capital Sentencing ◽  
Detailed History ◽  
Current State ◽  
History Of

The birthplace of the American republic—the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania—has historically been at the forefront of the capital punishment legislation in the United States. It was the first colony in the Union to abolish the death penalty for all crimes with the exception of murder. It was the first to set forth a statutory distinction between different degrees of criminal homicide, confining imposition of capital punishment to the most chilling form of this crime—“willful, deliberate, and premeditated killing.” With this storied history in mind, we have undertaken the task of examining the current state of the death penalty in the Commonwealth. Hence, in Part II of this Article, we set forth a detailed history of the capital sentencing scheme in Pennsylvania. Part III undertakes a statistical study of the imposition of the death penalty in the Commonwealth from 1978 until 1997. In Part IV, we conclude by summing up our general observations.

scholarly journals MISUNDERSTANDING OF THE INDONESIAN HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS ON THE APPLICATION OF THE DEATH PENALTY

Asy-Syari ah ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 185-198
Author(s):  
Tajul Arifin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Statistical Data ◽  
The United States ◽  
Drugs And Crime ◽  
Low Rate

AbstractThis research mainly uses statistical data published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDDC) in April 2014 to support the hypothesis of this research that “Human Rights Activists in Indonesia as in other countries have failed in comprehending the wisdom (hikmah) of the application of Capital Punishment”. This study found that: (1) the hypothesis of this research was strongly supported by the data; (2) the application of Syari`ah Criminal Law in Saudi Arabia has been an unchallenged proof for the wisdom (hikmah) behind the application of Capital Punishment by keeping the level of murder crime to a low rate which sharply contrast to many countries which apply positive laws which are based on a social contract between the ruler and the ruled, such as in The United States and Mexico; and (3) In upholding the true justice in Islamic Criminal Law, punishment can only be awarded to the criminals in a society where the Islamic ideal of social justice has been achieved. AbstrakPenelitian ini menggunakan data statistik yang diterbitkan oleh United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDDC) pada bulan April 2014 untuk mendukung hipotesis dari penelitian ini bahwa "Aktivis HAM di Indonesia seperti di negara-negara lain telah gagal dalam memahami hikmah dari penerapan hukuman mati". Studi ini menemukan bahwa: (1) hipotesis penelitian ini sangat didukung oleh data; (2) penerapan Hukum Pidana Syari`ah di Arab Saudi telah menjadi bukti tak terbantahkan untuk menunjukkan hikmah di balik penerapan hukuman mati dengan menjaga tingkat kejahatan pembunuhan pada tingkat yang sangat rendah yang sangat berlawanan dengan yang terjadi di banyak negara yang menerapkan hukum positif yang didasarkan pada kontrak sosial antara penguasa dan rakyat, seperti di Amerika Serikat dan Meksiko; dan (3) dalam menegakkan keadilan sejati dalam Hukum Pidana Islam, hukuman hanya dapat diberikan kepada penjahat dalam masyarakat di mana keadilan sosial yang ideal menurut Islam telah dicapai.

A Non-Pacifist Argument Against Capital Punishment

1998 ◽  
pp. 74-78
Author(s):  
Roy Weatherford
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
The United States ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Moral Argument ◽  
Self Defense

In this paper I present a moral argument against capital punishment that does not depend upon the claim that all killing is immoral. The argument is directed primarily against non-philosophers in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Oddly, the moral argument against capital punishment has not been effective in the United States despite the biblical injunction against killing. Religious supporters of the death penalty often invoke a presumed distinction between ‘killing’ and ‘murdering’ and avow that God forbade the latter but not the former. Self-defense and just wars are cited as cases of morally justified killing. Accepting these premises, I point out that when cases of justified killing in self-defense are altered to include an element of delay, disarming and premeditation, they too become murder. Since the death penalty clearly involves the elements of delay, disarming and premeditation, I conclude that the death penalty is murder in the biblical sense and ought to be abolished in any God-fearing (or otherwise moral) society.

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