Capital punishment is the most severe form of penalty that a state can impose on a criminal. Capital CRiMEs are those that require a punishment of death, which in the United States is carried out by hanging, electrocution, gas, firing squad, and most commonly, lethal injection. The American criminal justice system has traditionally recognized capital punishment as appropriate for the protection of civil society. In 1967, in response to numerous lawsuits questioning its arbitrary implementation, the courts imposed a moratorium on all death sentences until they could determine whether or not the penalty violated constitutional due process and whether it amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. In 1972 the U. S. SUPREME CoURT decided in Furman v. Georgia that the current justice system had no standards by which to distinguish capital offenses from noncapital crimes. In this light, the Court ruled that the implementation was arbitrary and constituted a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. Throughout the country, death row prisoners had their sentences commuted to life in prison. Thirty-five states quickly enacted new statutes establishing standards for capital crimes, and in 1976 the Court accepted these modifications as constitutional in Gregg v. Georgia. The following year, in Coker v. Georgia, the Court ruled that the death penalty for rape was “grossly disproportionate and excessive,” further concluding that capital crimes must cause death. Since then, with the exception of treason, murder is the only capital offense approved by the Court. During the 1980s, several states enacted legislation making nonlethal crimes, such as carjacking and drug-dealing, capital offenses. As of 2002, however, the Supreme Court had not tested these cases.
Public opinion is mixed on whether the United States should continue to allow capital punishment. Supporters rely on five general arguments to justify the death penalty: for the defense of society, for justice, for deterrence, for retribution, and for revenge. Many conservative groups support the death penalty as necessary for the sake of justice, while stressing the need for deterrence and defense of society. Opponents argue that capital punishment violates human rights, is arbitrarily implemented, and inherently is cruel and unusual. Traditionally, opponents tended to be political and social liberals. During the 1990s, however, these stereotypes were challenged. President William J. Clinton and his vice president, Albert Gore, Jr., vocally supported capital punishment. In contrast, the Roman
Catholic Church, which traditionally tolerated the penalty, has become outspoken in its opposition. During his 1999 tour of the United States, the conservative Pope John Paul II directly linked capital punishment and abortion as elements of a modern “culture of death.” The advent of DNA tracking in criminal investigations has also served to raise doubts about the reliability of the American judicial system to impose such a permanent penalty. One 1999 study examined appellate briefs over a 23-year period and discovered that prejudicial errors were discovered in 68 percent of the capital cases. Though not all of these errors led to a reversal, 7 percent of the defendants were later found to be innocent. In 1999 this trend prompted the Republican governor of Illinois, George H. Ryan, to declare an emergency moratorium on capital sentences until his state’s 66 percent error rate could be more closely examined. Several recent Supreme Court cases have had a direct bearing on the application of the death penalty. In the case of Atkins v. Virginia (2002), the Court ruled executions of mentally handicapped criminals to be “cruel and unusual punishment” and in Roper v. Simmons (2005), the Court held that the minimum age at the time of the crime be raised from 16 to 18 years of age. However, in the face of a challenge by two death row inmates from Kentucky that execution by lethal injection was cruel and unusual punishment and therefore a violation of the Eighth Amendment, in Baze v. Rees (2008) the Supreme Court upheld Kentucky’s method of lethal injection as constitutional.
See also EVANGELICAL Christians; Judicial Watch; liberalism; morality.
Further reading: Stuart Banner, The Death Penalty: An American History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003); Austin Sarat, When the State Kills: Capital Punishment and the American Condition (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 2001).
—Aharon W. Zorea
World History
