Essay About Capital Punishment And U.S. Supreme Court

Capital Punishment
Capital Punishment
Capital Punishment
It is almost uncommon to go throughout a day in this world and not hear of daily
tragedies such as murder, homicide, and manslaughter. But what seems to be more of an
interest to society is the outcome of these circumstances. More in particular, the
punishment one would receive after committing such a crime. The death penalty. The end
consequence that you accept when you decide to pull a trigger or thrust a knife into and
kill someone. The death penalty has always been and continues to be a very controversial
issue in the criminal justice policy. Every election year, politicians wishing to win the
beliefs of voters, compete with each other as to who will be the toughest in extending the
death penalty to those violators who have been convicted of murder. Both proponents and
opponents of capital punishment present powerful arguments to support their claims.
Their arguments are made on different views of what is moral in society, such as religion,
the effect on society, and the possibility of being denied, or “wrongly accused”. But how
often do these ideas come into the publics mind when they hear of our “fair” and
“trusted” government taking away someones living rights? People on both sides of the
issue argue endlessly to gain further support for their ideas. Opponents of capital
punishment argue that it violates the prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishments”
in the Eight Amendment to the Constitution and that the penalty is applied unequally.
But proponents also have their own persuasive ideas to further this punishment for
heinous crimes in demands for justice and strong retribution because a mere jail sentence
for a multiple murderer or rapist seems unjust compared with the damage inflicted on
society and the victims.
To start off, the definition of execution is putting an individual to death as a legal
penalty. Crimes that can result from this act can be both murder and homicide. The
earliest records of the death penalty can be found in the Code of Hammurabi, 1750 b.c. In
the United States, the first known use of the death penalty was in 1608 when Captain
George Kendell of Jamestown Colony in Virginia was accused of espionage for Spain.
By 1800, more than 200 capital punishments were recognized, and as a result 1000 or
more persons were sentenced every year since. (Encyclopedia Britannica)
The 1930s had some of the most executions, an average of 167 victims a year
possibly due the Great Depression and Prohibition. Prior to 1971, the death penalty was
officially allowed by about half of the states. Federal law also authorized the penalty, but
no one had actually suffered from it since 1967 because of the legal tangles and
challenges it brought to the Constitution. In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court halted
executions in all states by striking the death penalty as unconstitutional in the Furman v.
Georgia ruling. The Court held that capital punishment violated the constitutional
prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishment” because it could be applied in a