Introduction
Throughout history, as the world started to evolve, many different forms of punishment have been created to discourage criminal acts. The death penalty is probably one of the oldest forms of sentences employed to deter crime. Its first legal allusions date back to the Code of Hammurabi in 1750 B.C. when twenty-five crimes, such as theft—but excluding murder—were penalized with what is considered today a maximum sentence. Moreover, far from only being mentioned in documents related to laws and crime, we can also find references about execution as a form of punishment in the old and new testaments of the bible, the most famous being the crucifixion of Jesus Christ (Schreiber, 1996).
Perhaps, there is not a country in the world that can be freed from using the death penalty. However, during the eighteen century, a movement to order the elimination of this sentences began with the publication of Cesare Beccaria’s essay “On Crime and Punishment,” in 1764 (Patrick, 1965). In the awake of the division of mindsets, the pros and cons started to surface, along with a considerable set of laws built to protect criminals from these sentences, which began to deteriorate following the public’s dilemma.
The United States, while being part of those countries that generated a series of laws around capital punishment, is not among the ones who have eliminated it altogether. While it is not used with the same frequency as centuries before, some crimes are still punished with these maximum sentences, continuing the controversy around ethical, philosophical, and religious values. But most importantly, fueling the debate around if this is an effective way to deter crime.
Capital Punishment in the United States
The earliest reported execution due to a criminal act in the United States transpired in 1622 in Virginia (Green, 2005, as cited in Marcus, 2007). In the early colonials days, twelve offenses, and in Pennsylvania’s case seventeen offenses, were subject to the death penalty (Bye, 1926). Through the years, the U.S. has employed various techniques to terminate an offender’s life. Starting with the traditional hanging and public shooting to moving forward with the employment of other methods such as electrocution, lethal gas, and the more recent poisonous injections (Marcus, 2007).
The first death by electrocution was performed in convicted murder William Kemmler at the Auburn Penitentiary in New York on August 6, 1890. The lethal gas proceeded the electric chair when abolitionists nominated the method the most humane execution making Gee Jon, a Chinese immigrant worker, the first person to die in this way on February 8, 1924. The most up-to-date technique used for execution is the lethal injection; this method gained favor between the 1970s and 1980s for being considered an easier and cleaner execution. The first to die in this manner was Charles Brooks on December 6, 1982, in Texas (Allen, Latessa, & Ponder, 2019)
Although nowadays the U.S.’ history of capital punishment is mostly analyzed as a whole—a general dilemma of the country—most of the sentences are imposed by the state criminal justice system, as opposed to the federal system. The reasoning behind this is because the circumstances in which the death penalty was imposed have changed. The number of offenses subject to the punishment has decreased, leaving only violent crimes that result in death. The majority of these violent crimes occur within the states and not within the federal system (Marcus, 2007).
A series of landmark cases were the reason behind the changes in the system. With the idea to follow the rights granted by the Constitution, more specifically, follow the Eighth Amendment law against cruel and unusual punishment, the Supreme Court decided to get involved in determining the constitutionality of capital punishment rules (Marcus, 2007). Starting in 1878, in Wilkerson v. Utah, when the court ruled that the case against Utah was not considered cruel in context with the time and therefore didn’t violate the Eighth Amendment. In 1890, with the case of In re Kemmler, 136 U.S. 436, the debate over cruel and unusual punishment sparkled again over the introduction of the electric chair (Allen, Latessa, & Ponder, 2019). The new law approved by the Laws of New York, enacted the punishment of death by the passing through the body sufficient electricity intensity to cause the convict’s death. However, the Supreme Court ruled that the statute was within the legitimate sphere of the legislative power of the State and that even though the method was unusual, it wasn’t unconstitutional (Fuller & Supreme Court of the U.S., 1889).
The next significant landmark case was in 1972, in Furman v. Georgia, when the Supreme Court pronounced the current practice of the death penalty as unconstitutional because it gave the jury too much liberty at the time of deciding whether an offender should be sentenced to death or life imprisonment. The court also found that the appliance of it notably affected those of lower social class and people of color (Marcus, 2007).
In 1976, Gregg v. Georgia, the Supreme Court ruled that as long as the jury was given the appropriated guidance as to the exercise of its discretion, the death penalty was not in violation of the Constitution, deeming it constitutional and it was restored once again. After this case, more cases regarding capital punishment emerged. Among those, three are particularly notable due to the significant changes to the sentence. First, there is the Atkins v. Virginia, in 2002 where the Supreme Court decided that the death penalty is no longer allowed to be imposed on offenders who are mentally retarded—followed by Roper v. Simmons, 2005, where the punishment was also terminated in cases where the criminals were below the age of eighteen at the time of the crime. And lastly, in 2008, Kennedy v. Louisiana, making it no longer allowed to use as a punishment in offenders where the crime did not result in the victim’s death (Sethuraju, Sole, & Oliver, 2016).
While the conditions in which the death penalty was imposed have changed, the practices remain legal in thirty-six states, including the District of Colombia. However, although criminal sentencing has become more severe, the condemn is rarely used, more probably due to the fact that it has been unsuccessful as a deterrent and instead has caused murders (Warden, 2009).
The Death Penalty and the Deterrence Viewpoint
Many of the supporters of the death penalty are advocates of the idea that a criminal—in the death penalty case, a murder—should be executed as a form of retribution for his or her crime; a life of imprisonment is not sufficient for this kind of crime that can only be repaid with another life. However, there are also those who are in support of the practices because of the idea of deterrence.
The deterrence viewpoint can be summed up in the belief that individuals refrain from crime because they are scared of the punishment—and because society fears death more than anything else, capital punishment serves as the most successful deterrent (Schuessler, 1952). In 1971, the Los Angeles Police Department proclaimed that a group of suspects detained for theft stated that to avoid homicide—and as a result avoid the death penalty—they had stopped carrying around any kind of deadly weapon while committing the crime. While the reports were not backed up by evidence, they are believed genuine (Lamperti, 2010).
Even so, the data shows that far from keeping crime at bay, in many cases, it has increased the homicide rates instead of preventing it. In 1983, Charles Walker, an alcoholic who was looking for money, crossed paths with Kevin Paule and his fiancé Sharon Winker. Walker decided not to miss the opportunity and chose to rob the couple. However, when Paule identified the theft, he decided to shot the couple to death (Warden, 2009). If the death penalty were able to deter homicides, Walker wouldn’t have shot the soon to be a married couple in such an unconcerned manner.
Starting in the twentieth century, many social scientists dedicated to the task of examining the general effects of deterrence in the death penalty. In the studies, they decided to analyze the homicides rates with and without capital punishment. The researchers found that the significance of the murder rates between the states was not significant. Furthermore, they also learned that the murder rates didn’t rise in the states that abolished the sentence or decline in those who reinstate the sanction (Walia, 2009).
With the findings provided through the years, proving that harsh punishment does not make a change in the criminal rates, the death sentence trending has started to deteriorate, giving way to life sentence and a life sentence without parole.
The Criminal Justice System and the Death Sentence
The history of the Death Penalty in the United States is mostly a web of proclaiming the practice a cruel and unusual punishment that violates the Constitution, to later on be restored again. The issues surrounding the practices have never ceased; due to this, the criminal justice system is in the position to expand or limit the laws. Some of the changes can vary from modifying the execution methods and procedures—the latest and most commonly used being the lethal injection with sixteen states having a secondary method in case the lethal injection is found to be unconstitutional—to adjusting the laws to comply with the litigation process as did California voters in November of 2016, when they passed Proposition 66, a proposal to facilitate the death penalty process (California Innocence Project, 2019).
The trends also maintain the never-ending habit of revoking the practice entirely due to the pressure imposed by those whose moral, ethical, and religious values reject the idea of retribution and believe that the method doesn’t work in deterring homicide. In recent years states like New Mexico, Illinois, Connecticut, Maryland, and New Hampshire have decided to find a less problematic solution, legislatively replacing the death penalty with a sentence of life imprisonment without the chance of parole (Ncsl.org, 2019). The latest has become the popular choice by the public, only forty-one percent of the population choose the death penalty over a sentence of life without parole when presented with the option (Death Penalty Information Center, 2019).
While there is much material about the death sentence history, methods, deterrence, and the controversy around the use of this punishment, not much has been addressed about how, over the years, these small modifications have affected the criminal justice as a whole. However, every time the laws regarding the death sentences change, the courts, corrections, and other agencies of the system are also impacted by the alterations.
Conclusion
With the establishment of laws in order to maintain control and peace among society, the civilization restored to the creation of the death punishment to make criminals pay for breaking the rules imposed. The United States was not one of the countries who looked for a different method of discipline. On the contrary, its history around the practice has been extensive, and the debates over the use of it still cause disturb among the citizens. Nonetheless, while the opinions over capital punishment are mixed, the latest findings have demonstrated that not only deterrence cannot be achieved through this method of penalty, or that the laws are in ever-ending changes, but also that society’s view has come a long way from the first execution in the U.S., giving hope for a future where retribution doesn’t involve a life for a life.
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