Capital Punishment has NO Place in Civilized Society

Capital Punishment has no Place in Civilized Society

Since our nation's founding, the government -- colonial, federal and state --

has punished murder and, until recent years, rape with the ultimate sanction:

death. More than 13,000 people have been legally executed since colonial times,

most of them in the early 20th Century. By the 1930s, as many as 150 people

were executed each year. However, public outrage and legal challenges caused

the practice to wane. By 1967, capital punishment had virtually halted in the

United States, pending the outcome of several court challenges.

In 1972, in _Furman v. Georgia_, the Supreme Court invalidated hundreds of

scheduled executions, declaring that then existing state laws were applied in an

"arbitrary and capricious" manner and, thus, violated the Eighth Amendment's

prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, and the Fourteenth Amendment's

guarantees of equal protection of the laws and due process. But in 1976, in _

Gregg v. Georgia_, the Court resuscitated the death penalty: It ruled that the

penalty "does not invariably violate the Constitution" if administered in a

manner designed to guard against arbitrariness and discrimination. Several

states promptly passed or reenacted capital punishment laws.

Thirty-seven states now have laws authorizing the death penalty, as does the

military. A dozen states in the Middle West and Northeast have abolished

capital punishment, two in the last century (Michigan in 1847, Minnesota in

1853). Alaska and Hawaii have never had the death penalty. Most executions have

taken place in the states of the Deep South.

More than 2,000 people are on "death row" today. Virtually all are poor, a

significant number are mentally retarded or otherwise mentally disabled, more

than 40 percent are African American, and a disproportionate number are Native

American, Latino and Asian.

The ACLU believes that, in all circumstances, the death penalty is

unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment, and that its discriminatory

application violates the Fourteenth Amendment.

Here are the ACLU's answers to some questions frequently raised by the public

about capital punishment.

Doesn't the Death Penalty deter crime, especially murder?

No, there is no credible evidence that the death penalty deters crime. States

that have death penalty laws do not have lower crime rates or murder rates than

states without such laws. And states that have abolished capital punishment, or

instituted it, show no significant changes in either crime or murder rates.

Claims that each execution deters a certain number of murders have been

discredited by social science research. The death penalty has no deterrent

effect on most murders because people commit murders largely in the heat of

passion, and/or under the influence of alcohol or drugs, giving little thought