As of August 2012, over 3,200 men and women are under a death sentence and more than 1,300 men, women and children (at the time of the crime) have been executed since 1976.ĭespite the Supreme Court's 1976 ruling in Gregg v. In 2005, the Supreme Court held that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution forbid imposition of the death penalty on offenders who were under the age of 18 when their crimes were committed, resulting in commutation of death sentences to life for dozens of individuals across the country. Many have elected to hold proceedings prior to the merits trial, many with juries, to determine whether an accused is mentally retarded. Since then, states have developed a range of processes to ensure that mentally retarded individuals are not executed. In 2002, the Supreme Court held executions of mentally retarded criminals are “cruel and unusual punishments” prohibited by the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution. Congress also enacted and expanded federal death penalty statutes for peacetime espionage by military personnel and for a vast range of categories of murder.Įxecutions resumed in 1977. Subsequently 38 state legislatures and the Federal government enacted death penalty statutes patterned after those the Court upheld in Gregg. In 1976, the Supreme Court moved away from abolition, holding that "the punishment of death does not invariably violate the Constitution." The Court ruled that the new death penalty statutes contained "objective standards to guide, regularize, and make rationally reviewable the process for imposing the sentence of death." ( Gregg v. These statutes require a two-stage trial procedure, in which the jury first determines guilt or innocence and then chooses imprisonment or death in the light of aggravating or mitigating circumstances. Making the nationwide impact of its decision unmistakable, the Court summarily reversed death sentences in the many cases then before it, which involved a wide range of state statutes, crimes and factual situations.īut within four years after the Furman decision, several hundred persons had been sentenced to death under new state capital punishment statutes written to provide guidance to juries in sentencing. The Court, concentrating its objections on the manner in which death penalty laws had been applied, found the result so "harsh, freakish, and arbitrary" as to be constitutionally unacceptable. In 1972, the Supreme Court declared that under then-existing laws "the imposition and carrying out of the death penalty… constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments." ( Furman v. INTRODUCTION TO THE “MODERN ERA” OF THE DEATH PENALTY IN THE UNITED STATES Nationally, at least one person is exonerated for every 10 that are executed. Since 1973, over 156 people have been released from death rows in 26 states because of innocence. Innocent people are too often sentenced to death.
The FBI has found the states with the death penalty have the highest murder rates. They ranked increasing the number of police officers, reducing drug abuse, and creating a better economy with more jobs higher than the death penalty as the best ways to reduce violence.
The vast majority of law enforcement professionals surveyed agree that capital punishment does not deter violent crime a survey of police chiefs nationwide found they rank the death penalty lowest among ways to reduce violent crime. The death penalty is a waste of taxpayer funds and has no public safety benefit. People of color are far more likely to be executed than white people, especially if thevictim is white The death penalty system in the US is applied in an unfair and unjust manner against people, largely dependent on how much money they have, the skill of their attorneys, race of the victim and where the crime took place. The ACLU’s opposition to capital punishment incorporates the following fundamental concerns: Through litigation, legislation, and advocacy against this barbaric and brutal institution, we strive to prevent executions and seek the abolition of capital punishment. The death penalty is uncivilized in theory and unfair and inequitable in practice. Furthermore, we believe that the state should not give itself the right to kill human beings – especially when it kills with premeditation and ceremony, in the name of the law or in the name of its people, and when it does so in an arbitrary and discriminatory fashion.Ĭapital punishment is an intolerable denial of civil liberties and is inconsistent with the fundamental values of our democratic system. The American Civil Liberties Union believes the death penalty inherently violates the constitutional ban against cruel and unusual punishment and the guarantees of due process of law and of equal protection under the law.
0 kommentar(er)
