Capital Punishment
| Author | Daniel Brannen, Richard Hanes, Elizabeth Shaw |
| Pages | 253-259 |
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Capital punishment, also called the death penalty, means killing a person as punishment for a crime. By the end of 1999, thirty-eight states and the federal government allowed the death penalty for criminal homicide, or murder. The District of Columbia and the following states did not allow the death penalty: Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
In 1999 ninety-eight executions occurred in the United States, up from sixty-eight in 1998. Ninety-four were by lethal injection, which kills the criminal with a deadly chemical solution. Three were by electrocution in an electric chair. Just one was with lethal gas, by which the state locks the criminal in a room with deadly gas. The only other methods allowed in the United States, hanging and firing squad, were not used in 1999.
Colonists brought the death penalty to America from England. The first recorded execution in America happened in the Jamestown Colony of
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Virginia in 1608. Death penalty laws varied widely in the colonies. In 1636, the Massachusetts Bay Colony allowed capital punishment for a long list of crimes that included witchcraft and blasphemy. Pennsylvania, by contrast, initially allowed the death penalty only for treason and murder.
In the wake of the American Revolution in 1776, eleven colonies became states with new constitutions. Nine of the states prohibited cruel and unusual punishment, but all allowed the death penalty. In 1790, the first U.S. Congress passed a law allowing the death penalty for crimes of robbery, rape, murder, and forgery of public securities (notes and bonds for the payment of money). Under most of these laws, the death penalty was an automatic punishment for murder and other serious crimes.
Ever since the United States was established, many Americans have opposed the death penalty. In 1845, the American Society for the Abolition of Capital Punishment was formed. In 1847, Michigan became the first state to abolish capital punishment for all crimes except treason. By 1850, nine states had societies working to abolish capital punishment. Reflecting this trend, many states and other countries began to reduce the crimes punishable by death to murder and treason. Nevertheless, nearly 1400 recorded executions took place in the United States in the 1800s.
The movement to abolish capital punishment had both high and low points in the 1900s. On the up side, by the beginning of the century most states had changed their laws. Instead of making the death penalty automatic, new laws allowed juries to choose between death or imprisonment.
A low point, however, was in the 1930s and 1940s when between one hundred and two hundred prisoners were executed each year. Executions then declined in the 1950s and 1960s, partly because more prisoners began fighting their sentences in court. This trend led to a series of U.S. Supreme Court cases in the 1970s about whether the death penalty violates the U.S. Constitution.
The Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution says that the government may not use "cruel and unusual punishments." Death penalty opponents say that this makes capital punishment unlawful. However, supporters argue that the Eighth Amendment only prevents torture and other barbaric punishments. They point out that the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments say that the government may not take a person's...
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