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The Death Penalty and the Eighth Amendment
Is the death penalty consistent with the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against the imposition of cruel and unusual punishments? This essay will address this question and present a short history of the death penalty in America.
The Supreme Court considered particular applications of the death penalty in the 1940s and 1950s. In each case it upheld the state's action without addressing the larger issue of the death penalty's constitutionality. In the 1960s, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, led by Professor Anthony Amsterdam mounted a full-scale attack on the death penalty. Adopting a "moratorium strategy," the LDF succeeded in blocking all executions for five years, creating a "death-row logjam."
In Furman v Georgia in 1972, the Court invalidated all then-existing death penalty laws based on the inherent arbitrariness of their application. Most observers at the time concluded that there would never again be an execution in the United States. They were wrong. In 1976, in Gregg v. Georgia, the Court upheld Georgia's new capital-sentencing procedures, concluding that they had sufficiently reduced the problem of arbitrary and capricious imposition of death associated with earlier statutes.
The Court continued to face questions concerning the application of the death penalty: to non-murderers, to minors, to mentally disabled prisoners, to racial minorities. One such case is McCleskey v. Kemp, a challenge based on a study that showed murderers of white victims were far more likely to be sentenced to death than murderers of black victims.
The Eighth Amendment says: Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted (Constitution). How does it square with the actual facts of capital punishment:
1. The average inmate put to death in 1998 spent ten years and ten months on death row.
2. In 1998, 285 people were sentenced to death.
3. At the close of 1999, Texas has the most prisoners on death row (39), followed by California (31), and Alabama and Florida (25 each).
4. Over 3,500 prisoners are currently on death row.
5. Thirty-nine states have death penalty laws on their books.
One of the most eloquent attacks on the death penalty ever delivered in an American courtroom came in the Leopold & Loeb Case in 1924. Clarence Darrow's eloquence is often credited with saving the lives of two confessed teenaged murderers.
The American public has consistently favored the use of the death penalty. Although anti-capital-punishment groups in the 19th century won some victories in slowing down the drive for death-penalty laws, most of their successes were short-lived. By the early 20th century, executions were common and widespread, reaching record numbers by the 1930s and 1940s, when more than 100 people were executed each year. But as public and official confidence in the effectiveness and fairness of capital punishment began to wane in the 1960s, the number of yearly executions dropped to the single digits. By the early 1970s, there was an unofficial end to executions in the country.
The courts have declared that if a sentence is inhuman, outrageous, or shocking to society, it would be considered cruel and unusual. For example, cutting body parts off, breaking on the wheel, crucifixion, and so on. The Founding Fathers intention for the Eighth Amendment was to give the government into the hands of people and take it away from arbitrary rulers and judges, who might expose any amount of excessive bail or cruel and unusual punishment that they wished....
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The death penalty debate in the United States is dominated by the fraudulent voice of the anti-death penalty movement. The culture of lies and deceit so dominates that movement that many of the falsehoods are now wrongly accepted as fact, by both advocates and opponents of capital punishment. (Sharp) Opponents of capital punishment are extremely outspoken and vehement in their arguments. The American Civil Liberties Union believes the death penalty violates the constitutional ban against cruel and unusual punishment. However, the death penalty is not cruel and unusual punishment, the authors of the United States Constitution’s Eighth Amendment related “cruel and unusual” punishment to methods used in ages past. The Eighth Amendment was created to outlaw such practices as bur...
In 1972, the Supreme Court in Furman v. Georgia ruled that the death penalty for murder was unconstitutional. They also argue that the death penalty costs too much to carry out (Academic American Encyclopedia "Capital Punishment").
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The death penalty is always going to be a “hot topic” in today’s society. The Eighth Amendment guarantees a criminal’s rights against cruel and unusual punishment. The Eighth amendment was adopted in 1791, when beheading, burning at the stake and crucifixion was just a few of the ways to execute a criminal.
Capital punishment has clashed for a long time in the forum of public opinion in state legislatures and most recently in courts. In 1972, the case of Furman vs. Georgia (Appendix 1) reached the supreme court. The court decided that punishment by death did indeed violate the Eighth Amendment and the prohibition against "cruel and unusual punishment." Because of this decision death sentences all over the country were set aside. Since then capital punishment has become an increasingly controversial issue.
The death penalty has been around since the time of Jesus Christ. Executions have been recorded from the 1600s to present times. From about 1620, the executions by year increased in the US. It has been a steady increase up until the 1930s; later the death penalty dropped to zero in the 1970s and then again rose steadily. US citizens said that the death penalty was unconstitutional because it was believed that it was "cruel and unusual" punishment (Amnesty International). In the 1970s, the executions by year dropped between zero and one then started to rise again in the 1980s. In the year 2000, there were nearly one hundred executions in the US (News Batch). On June 29, 1972, the death penalty was suspended because the existing laws were no longer convincing. However, four years after this occurred, several cases came about in Georgia, Florida, and Texas where lawyers wanted the death penalty. This set new laws in these states and later the Supreme Court decided that the death penalty was constitutional under the Eighth Amendment (Amnesty International).
Pasquerella, Lynn. “The Death Penalty in the United States.” The Study Circle Resource Center of Topsfield Foundation. July 1991. Topsfield Foundation. 03 Feb 2011. Web.
Christianity began circa 30 CE in Palestine, known today as Israel. God sent an angel to a woman named Mary that told her that she would be having a baby. While in a stable in Bethlehem, she gave birth to Jesus, who would eventually become the founder of Christianity. At the age of 30, Jesus was baptized, or welcomed by the Christian faith, by his cousin John. Jesus' followers believed that he was their "messiah," or savior, and God in human form. However, as Jesus began to spread Christianity, his popularity threatened Jewish authorities, resulting in the arrests of many Christians. Despite this, Christianity still spread throughout the world.
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Every year approximately 250 new offenders are added to death row. In 1994 there were 2,850 persons awaiting execution. Yet no more than thirty-eight people have been executed a year since 1976. This is a ridiculously low number compared to 199 persons executed in 1935 (all from Cole 451). The reason for this slow execution rate is the process of appeals, from sentencin...
Crime is everywhere. Wherever we look, we find criminals and crime. Criminals have become a part of our daily lives. Does this mean we let them be the darkness of our society? No, definitely not. Eliminating crime and criminals is our duty, and we cannot ignore it. Getting the rightly accused to a just punishment is very important. Some criminals commit a crime because they have no other option to survive, but some do it for fun. I do not advocate death penalty for everybody. A person, who stole bread from a grocery store, definitely does not deserve death penalty. However, a serial killer, who kills people for fun or for his personal gain, definitely deserves death penalty. Death penalty should continue in order to eliminate the garbage of our society. Not everybody deserves to die, but some people definitely do. I support death penalty because of several reasons. Firstly, I believe that death penalty serves as a deterrent and helps in reducing crime. Secondly, it is true that death penalty is irreversible, but it is hard to kill a wrongly convicted person due to the several chances given to the convicted to prove his innocence. Thirdly, death penalty assures safety of the society by eliminating these criminals. Finally, I believe in "lex tallionis" - a life for a life.