The Death Penalty
...PENALTY
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,...
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