Capital punishment in the United States

src: nightcap.us

The death penalty is a legal punishment in the United States, currently used by 31 states, the federal government, and the military. Its existence can be traced to the early American colonies. The United States is the only Western country to apply the current capital punishment, one of 54 countries in the world to implement it, and is the first country to develop a deadly injection as a method of execution, which has since been adopted by five other countries.

There was no execution in the United States between 1967 and 1977. In 1972, the US Supreme Court sentenced the death penalty law at Furman v. Georgia , reducing all the death sentences pending a life sentence imprisonment.

Furthermore, the majority of states passed new death penalty laws, and the courts affirmed the legality of the death penalty in the 1976 case of Gregg v. Georgia . Since then, more than 7,800 defendants have been sentenced to death; more than 1,400 have been executed, 161 sentenced to death in the modern era were released prior to their execution, and more than 2,900 are still sentenced to death.

Video Capital punishment in the United States

Histori

Sejarah Pra- Furman

The first sentence recorded in the British North American colony was conducted in 1608 at Captain George Kendall, who was executed by a firing squad in the Jamestown colony to spy on the Spanish government.

The Bill of Rights adopted in 1789 includes the Eighth Amendment which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. The Fifth Amendment is structured in a language that implies the possibility of using the death penalty, requiring grand jury charges for "capital crimes" and legal proceedings due to government's "lifes". The Fourteenth Amendment adopted in 1868 also required a legal process for the deprivation of life by any state.

The Espy file , compiled by M. Watt Espy and John Ortiz Smykla, lists 15,269 executed people in the United States and its predecessor colonies between 1608 and 1991. From 1930 to 2002, there were 4,661 executions in the US, about two-thirds of them in the first 20 years. In addition, the US Army executed 135 soldiers between 1916 and 1955 (most recently).

Movement of early elimination

Three states abolished the death penalty for murders during the 19th century: Michigan (who never executed prisoners since attaining statehood) in 1846, Wisconsin in 1853 and Maine in 1887. Rhode Island is also a state with an abolitionist background that long after the death penalty was revoked in 1852, although it was theoretically available for murder committed by a prisoner between 1872 and 1984.

Other countries that abolished the death penalty for murder before Gregg v. Georgia included in: Minnesota in 1911, Vermont in 1964, Iowa and West Virginia in 1965 and North Dakota in 1973. Hawaii abolished the death penalty in 1948 and Alaska in 1957, both before their country. Puerto Rico withdrew it in 1929 and the District of Columbia in 1981. Arizona and Oregon abolished the death penalty by popular vote in 1916 and 1964, but both returned it, again by vote, a few years later: Arizona in 1918 and Oregon in 1978. Puerto Rico and Michigan are the only two US jurisdictions that explicitly prohibit the death penalty in their constitution: in 1952 and 1964, respectively.

Constitutional law development

Nevertheless, the death penalty continues to be used by the majority of states and the federal government for various crimes, especially murder and rape, from the formation of the United States until the early 1960s. Until then, "except for some mavericks, no one gave a belief in the possibility of ending the death penalty with the interpretation of constitutional law", according to abolitionist Hugo Bedau.

The possibility of challenging the constitutionality of the death penalty becomes increasingly more realistic after the United States Supreme Court ruled Trop v. Dulles in 1958, when the court said explicitly for the first time that the Eighth Amendment of the cruel and unusual clauses had to withdraw the meaning from "a growing standard of decency that marked the progress of mature society", not from its original meaning. Also in the case of 1932 Powell v. Alabama , the court made the first step of what would later be called the "death of different" jurisprudence, when it stated that the defendant was entitled to a court appointed by lawyers in capital cases - a right which was later expanded to the non- in 1963, with Gideon v. Wainwright .

Death penalty suspended (1972)

In Furman v. Georgia , the US Supreme Court considers a group of joint cases. The main case involves an individual convicted under Georgia's death penalty law, which displays a "union trial" procedure in which the jury is required to return a guilty or innocent verdict and, simultaneously, determine whether the defendant will be sentenced to death or live a prison sentence. Furman's final execution of Furman was Luis Monge on 2 June 1967.

In the 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court handed down the death penalty in each consolidated case as unconstitutional in violation of the Eighth Amendment and Fourteenth Constitution of the United States. The Supreme Court has never decided the death penalty to be unconstitutional per se. The five judges in the majority did not produce a general opinion or reason for their decision, however, and only agreed on a brief statement announcing the outcome. The narrowest view, Byron White's and Potter Stewart's opinions, expresses general concerns about the improper application of death penalty in various cases, but does not exclude the possibility of a constitutional death penalty law. Stewart and William O. Douglas are explicitly worried about racial discrimination in enforcing the death penalty. Thurgood Marshall and William J. Brennan Jr. expressed the opinion that the death penalty is strictly prohibited by the Eighth Amendment as a cruel and unusual punishment.

The Furman decision resulted in all pending death sentences being reduced to life imprisonment, and described by experts as a "legal bomb". The next day, columnist Barry Schweid wrote that "it is impossible" that the death penalty could exist anymore in the United States.

The death sentence is returned (1976)

Instead of leaving the death penalty, 37 countries enact new death penalty laws that seek to address White and Stewart's concerns at Furman . Some countries responded by enacting a mandatory death penalty law which stipulates the death penalty for anyone convicted of certain forms of murder. White has hinted that such a scheme would meet his constitutional concerns in his opinion Furman . Other states have adopted "convoluted" court procedures and collapse, with procedural limitations on the ability of jurors to announce the death penalty designed to limit jury discretion.

On July 2, 1976, the US Supreme Court resolved Gregg v. Georgia and upheld the 7-2 Georgia procedure in which the capital crime court was halved into a guilty and punitive phase. In the first process, the jury decides the defendant's fault; if the defendant is innocent or otherwise innocent of the first-degree murder, the death penalty will not be imposed. At the second hearing, the jury determines whether certain law-abiding factors exist, whether there are mitigation factors, and, in many jurisdictions, take into account the burdensome and alleviate factors in assessing the final penalty - either death or life in prison, either with or without parole. On the same day, at Woodson v. North Carolina and Roberts v. Louisiana , the court dropped 5-4 laws that gave mandatory death sentences.

The execution continued on January 17, 1977, when Gary Gilmore left before the firing squad in Utah. Although hundreds of people were sentenced to death in the United States during the 1970s and early 1980s, only ten people other than Gilmore (who had released all appeal rights) were actually executed before 1984.

The Supreme Court narrows the capital offense

In 1977, the Supreme Court decision Coker v. Georgia prohibits the death penalty for rape of an adult woman. Previously, the death penalty for adult rape has been gradually abolished in the United States, and at the time of the decision, Georgia and the US Federal government were two jurisdictions that still retained the death penalty for the offense.

In the case of 1980 Godfrey v. Georgia , the US Supreme Court ruled that murder could be put to death only if it involves a narrow and precise irritating factor.

The US Supreme Court has placed two major restrictions on the use of capital punishment. First, the case of Atkins v. Virginia , decided on June 20, 2002, states that the execution of intellectually disabled inmates is unconstitutional. Secondly, in 2005, a court decision in Roper v. Simmons attacked the execution for offenders under the age of 18 at the time of the crime.

In the case of 2008 Kennedy v. Louisiana , the court also held 5-4 that the death penalty is unconstitutional when applied to non-killing of the person, including child rape. Only two death row convicts (both in Louisiana) were affected by the decision. However, the decision came less than five months before the 2008 presidential election and was criticized by both candidates for the big parties Barack Obama and John McCain.

Revoke the movement and legal challenges

In 2004, the capital punishment schemes of New York and Kansas were beaten by the highest courts of their respective countries. Kansas successfully appealed the decision of the Supreme Court of Kansas to the United States Supreme Court, which returned the law at Kansas v. Marsh (2006), holding it does not violate the US Constitution. The New York Court of Appeal's decision is based on the country's constitution, so no appeal is available. Lower state homes have since blocked all attempts to recover the death penalty by adopting a valid penalty scheme. In 2016, Delaware's death sentence law was also beaten by his supreme court.

In 2007, New Jersey became the first country to lift the death sentence by legislative vote since Gregg v. Georgia, followed by New Mexico in 2009, Illinois in 2011, Connecticut in 2012, and Maryland in 2013. Repetition did not apply retroactively, but in New Jersey, Illinois and Maryland, the governor changed all the death sentences after enacting new law. In Connecticut, the Supreme Court of Connecticut decides in 2015 that revocation should be retroactive. New Mexico is the only country with the remaining prisoners in prison and no current capital punishment laws.

The Nebraska legislature also issued a revocation in 2015, but the referendum campaign garnered enough signatures to suspend it. The death penalty was restored by popular vote on November 8, 2016. On the same day, California voters beat a proposal to lift the death penalty, and adopted another initiative to speed up the appeals process.

Because of Furman , 11 countries have set up popular votes that deal with capital punishment through initiatives and referendum processes. All produce votes to return it, refuse to abolish it, expand the field of its application, establish in the constitution of the state that it is unconstitutional, or speed up the appeal process in cases of capital.

Country that has removed the death penalty

19 states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have removed the death penalty for all crimes. Below is a table of 19 states and the date that the state abolished the death penalty.

The deadly injection era

From 1976 to 1 January 2018, there were 1,465 executions, of which 1,290 were injected with lethal injection, 158 with electricity, 11 by inhalation gas, 3 by hanging, and 3 by firing squads. The South has most of these executions, with 1,195; there are 181 in the Midwest, 85 in the West, and only 4 in the Northeast. No Northeast country executes since Connecticut, now abolitionist, in 2005. The state of Texas alone commissions 545 executions, more than 1/3 of the total; the states of Texas, Virginia, and Oklahoma combined make up more than half the total, with 770 executions among them. 3 executions have been carried out by the federal government, the last in 2003. Executions increased in frequency to 1999; 98 prisoners were executed that year. Since 1999, the number of executions has declined considerably, and 20 executions in 2016 have been the fewest since 1991.

The death penalty was an important issue during the 1988 presidential election. It appeared on 13 October 1988, a debate between two presidential candidates George HW Bush and Michael Dukakis, when Bernard Shaw, the debate moderator, asked Dukakis, "Governor, if Kitty Dukakis [his wife] was raped and killed, do you support the irrevocable death sentence for the murderer? "Dukak replied," No, I do not, and I think you know that I have been opposed to death sentence all my life I see no evidence that it is a barrier , and I think there are better and more effective ways to deal with violent crime. "Bush was elected, and many, including Dukakis himself, cited the statement as the beginning of the end of his campaign.

In 1996, Congress passed Anti-Terrorism and the Law of Effective Death Penalties to streamline the appeals process in capital cases. The bill was signed into law by President Bill Clinton, who passed the death penalty during his 1992 presidential campaign.

A study found that at least 34 of the 749 executions conducted in the US between 1977 and 2001, or 4.5%, involved "unexpected problems or delays that led, at least to say, unnecessary suffering to prisoners or that reflected a gross incompetence from the executioner ". This "failed execution" rate remained stable over the period. A study published in The Lancet in 2005 found that in 43% of cases of lethal injections, hypnotic blood levels in custody were not sufficient to ensure unconsciousness. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court ruled in 2008 ( Baze v. Rees ) and again in 2015 ( Glossip v. Gross ) that lethal injection is not a cruel punishment and ordinary.

Women history and capital punishment

In 1632, 24 years after the first man's execution was recorded in the colony, Jane Champion became the first woman to be legally executed. He was sentenced to death by hanging after he was convicted of murder in front of the grand jury. The second half of the 1600s saw the execution of 14 women and 6 men accused of witchcraft during the magician's witches and Salem Wizard Trials. While men and women were executed, 80% of the allegations against women, resulting in a list of male executions disproportionate with a margin of 6 (actual) to 4 (expected), ie 50% more men were executed than expected from the percentage the male defendant.

Other famous female executions include Mary Surratt, Margie Velma Barfield and Wanda Jean Allen. Mary Surratt was executed in 1865 after being found guilty of conspiracy to kill Abraham Lincoln. Margie Velma Barfield was convicted of murder and when she was executed with lethal injection in 1984, she became the first woman to be executed since the death penalty ban was lifted in 1976. Wanda Jean Allen was convicted of murder in 1989 and has a high-profile execution with lethal injection in January 2001. He was the first black woman to be executed in the United States since 1954. According to Allen's attorney, prosecutors used the low IQ, race and homosexuality in their representation as murderers in court.

Maps Capital punishment in the United States

Capital crime

The aggravated murder

The aggravating factors of seeking death penalty vary widely among death penalty states. California has twenty-two; New Hampshire has seven. Some incriminating circumstances are almost universal, such as robberies-murders, murders involving rape victims, and the murder of a police officer on duty.

Some countries have included killing of children on the list of aggravating factors, but the age of the victim where the murder could be punished for death varies. In 2011, Texas raised this age from six to ten.

In some states, the high number of aggravating factors has been criticized for giving prosecutors too much wisdom in choosing cases in which they believe the death penalty is justified. Particularly in California, an official commission proposed, in 2008, to reduce these factors to five (some murder, torture killings, the murder of a police officer, prison killings, and other crime-related murders). Columnist Charles Lane goes further, and proposes that murders related to crimes other than rape should no longer be a capital offense when there is only one dead victim.

The aggravating factor

In order for a person to be eligible to be sentenced to death when convicted of first-degree murder being exacerbated, a jury or a court (if no jury) must determine at least one of the sixteen aggravating factors existing during the crime commission. The following is a list of 16 incriminating factors.

1. Murder while committing another crime.
2. The offender is convicted of a separate crime involving firearms before the murder is exacerbated.
3. Sentenced from a separate crime in which death or life imprisonment is authorized before murder is exacerbated.
4. Sentenced from a crime of crime separated before an aggravating murder.
5. The offender harms the life of at least 1 or more persons in danger of death during a crime.
6. The offender commits a crime in a very cruel, vicious, or deprave manner.
7. Offenders commit crimes for financial gain.
8. Offenders commit crimes for monetary gain.
9. The murder is planned, involves planning to take place, or the offender shows early signs of a crime, such as keeping a journal of crime details and posting something on the Internet.
10. The previous offender was found guilty of at least two drug offenses.
11. The victim will not be able to defend himself when attacked.
12. The previous offender was found guilty of a federal drug offense.
13. Offenders engage in long-term business of selling drugs to minors.
14. A high-ranking official is killed, such as the President of the United States, another country leader, or a police officer.
15. The previous offender was found guilty of sexual assault or child rape.
16. During the crime commission, the offender kills or tries to kill many people.

Crime against states

Court opinions at Kennedy v. Louisiana says that the decision does not apply to "treason, espionage, terrorism, and drug activities, which is a violation of the State".

Since no one has been sentenced to death for such offenses, the court has not yet decided on the constitutionality of the death penalty applied to them.

Betrayal, espionage and large-scale drug trafficking are all major crimes under federal law. Betrayal can also be put to death in six states (Arkansas, California, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Missouri). Vermont still had the Furman's pre-laws that gave the death penalty for treason even though it abolished the death penalty for murder in 1965. Massive drug trafficking could be executed in two states (Florida and Missouri). Plane hijacking is a major crime in Georgia and Mississippi.

src: static.prisonpolicy.org

Legal process

The administration of the death penalty law in the United States usually involves five important steps: (1) a decision on prosecution to seek the death penalty (2) punishment, (3) a direct review, (4) a review of state guarantees, and (5) federal habeas corpus.

Pardon, through which the Governor or President of jurisdiction can unilaterally reduce or cancel the death penalty, is the executive process rather than the judiciary.

The decision to seek the death penalty

While judges in criminal cases can usually impose a heavier prison sentence than prosecutors demand, the death penalty may be imposed only if the accused specifically decides to look for it.

In the decades since Furman , new questions have arisen about whether or not arbitrary prosecutions have replaced the punishment of arbitrariness. A study by Pepperdine University School of Law was published in Temple Law Review, surveying the decision-making process among prosecutors in various states. The authors found that the decision to file the death penalty of the prosecutor remained characterized by local "oddities", indicating that they were not in accordance with directives from the Supreme Court's directives. This means that "the kinds of injustices the Court wants to eliminate" may still "infect capital cases". Extensive prosecutorial disclosure remains because criteria are too broad. California law, for example, has 22 "special circumstances", making almost all planned murders potentially a capital case.

A proposed remedy against the arbitrary prosecution is to transfer the prosecution of capital cases to the state attorney general.

Punishment

Of the 31 states with the death penalty, 29 give punishments decided by the jury, and 28 require a unanimous sentence.

The only country that does not require a jury decision is Alabama. In Alabama, at least 10 jurors must agree. A re-trial occurs if the jury dies.

Nebraska is the only country in which the sentence is decided by a three-judge panel. If one of the judges on the panel opposes death, the defendant is sentenced to life imprisonment.

Montana is the only state in which a court judge decides on his own sentence.

In all the states where the jury is involved, only eligible veniremen may be elected in such a jury, to exclude both persons who will always vote for the death penalty and those categorically opposed to it.

However, states differ on what happens if the penalty phase produces a hanging jury:

• In four states (Arizona, California, Kentucky, and Nevada), a retrial of the penalty stage will take place before a different jury (common-law rule for cancellation of hearings).
• In the two states (Indiana and Missouri), the judge will decide the sentence.
• In the other 22 states, hanged juries result in life sentences, though only one juror opposes death. Federal law also gives that result.

The first result is called the rule of "true unanimity", while the third is criticized as a "one-jury veto" rule.

Reviews directly

If the defendant is sentenced to death at the court level, the case then goes into direct review. The live review process is a typical legal appeal. The appellate court examined the evidence presented in court and the law that the lower court applied and decided whether the decision was legally healthy or not. A direct review of the capital decision trial will result in one of three outcomes. If an appeals court finds that there are no significant legal errors occurring in a capital court hearing, the appeals court will affirm the verdict, or allow the sentence to stand. If an appeals court finds that a significant legal error does occur, it will reverse the verdict, or cancel the sentence and order a new sentencing session. Lastly, if an appeals court finds that no reasonable jury can find the defendant eligible for the death penalty, a scarcity, it will order the defendant to be freed, or not guilty, of the crime for which he was given the death penalty, and order him the next severe penalty whose violations are eligible. Approximately 60 percent survive the full review process intact.

Country collateral review

At times when the death penalty is affirmed in direct review, additional methods of attacking judgments, albeit less familiar than typical appeals, persist. This additional solution is considered a security review, that is, a way to override the final judgment. When inmates receive the death penalty in state courts, as is usually the case, the first step in a guarantee review is a review of state collateral, often called the state habeas corpus. (If the case is a federal death sentence, it is directly the result of a direct review to federal habeas corpus.) Although all countries have several types of security review, the process varies greatly from state to state. In general, the purpose of this collateral process is to allow prisoners to challenge their sentences for reasons not reasonably expected at the time of the trial or direct review. Most often, this is a claim, such as ineffective advisory assistance, which requires the court to consider new evidence outside the original court record, something that the court may not have done in its usual appeal. The guarantee review country, although an important step in helping to determine the scope of the next review through federal habeas corpus, rarely succeeds in and of itself. Only about 6 percent of death penalties are canceled on state guarantees.

In Virginia, the state habeas corpus for those condemned by the state supreme court under original exclusive jurisdiction since 1995, immediately after a direct review by the same court. This is to avoid any trial before a lower court, and partly why Virginia has the shortest time between death penalty and execution (less than eight years) and has executed 113 offenders since 1976 with only five remaining in punishment dead in June 2017.

To reduce litigation delays, other countries require prisoners to file their country's collateral appeal before the settlement of their immediate appeals, or provide adjudication of direct and collateral attacks together in a "unity review".

Habeas federal corpus

After the death penalty is affirmed in the state collateral examination, inmates may file suit for federal habeas corpus, which is a unique type of lawsuit that may be filed in federal courts. The Federal habeas corpus is a type of collateral review, and it is the only way that state detainees can attack the death penalty in federal courts (other than a petition to certiorari to the United States Supreme Court after a direct review and state review). The scope of the federal habeas corpus is governed by the Anti-Terrorism and the Act of 1996 Effective Death Penalty (AEDPA), which significantly limits its previous scope. The purpose of federal habeas corpus is to ensure that state courts, through a process of direct review and review of state collateral, have done a reasonable job in protecting the constitutional rights of federal prisoners. Prisoners can also use federal habeas corpus clothing to bring new evidence that they are not guilty of crimes, although to be a legitimate defense at this late stage in the process, the evidence of innocence must be truly appealing. According to Eric Freedman, 21 percent of death sentences are reversed through federal habeas corpus.

James Liebman, a law professor at Columbia Law School, stated in 1996 that his study found that when the habeas corpus petition in the death penalty case was traced from conviction to resolve the case, there was a "40 percent success rate in all capital cases from 1978 to 1995". Similarly, a study by Ronald Tabak in a legal review article puts a success rate in the case of habeas corpus involving death row inmates even higher, finding that between "1976 and 1991, about 47 percent of habeas petitions filed by death row inmates were given". Different numbers are largely definitive, not substantive: Freedam statistics are seen in the percentage of all death-punishment cases reversed, while others only look at cases that are not reversed before a review of habeas corpus.

A similar process is available to prisoners who are sentenced to death by federal court decisions.

AEDPA also provides fast habeas procedures in cases of capital for countries that meet some of the requirements set forth therein regarding the appointment of an advisor to a death row. Under the program, federal habeas corpus for cursed detainees will be decided within about three years of the affirmance of punishment on state collateral reviews. In 2006, Congress granted the determination of whether a country qualified for the US attorney general, with the possibility of a state appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Until March 2016, the Department of Justice is still not certified.

Part 1983

If a federal court refuses to issue a habeas corpus warrant, the death penalty becomes final for all purposes. Recently, however, detainees have postponed executions through other means of federal litigation using the Civil Rights Act of 1871 - codified at 42 USCÃ,§ 1983 - enabling people to bring lawsuits against state actors to protect the federal constitution and their legal rights.

While the aforementioned appeals are usually limited to one and automatically carry out the death penalty, Article 1983 lawsuits are not limited, but the applicant will be granted a postponement of execution only if the court believes he has a possibility of success over the reward.

Traditionally, Section 1983 is of limited use for state custody under the death penalty because the Supreme Court has stated that habeas corpus, not Section 1983, is the only vehicle in which state custody can challenge his judgment on death. In the case of 2006 Hill v. McDonough, however, the United States Supreme Court approved the use of Section 1983 as a vehicle to challenge state execution methods as a cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment.. The theory is that a prisoner carrying such a challenge does not directly attack his judgment of death, but the way in which judgment will be made. Therefore, the Supreme Court held in the case of Hill that a detainee may use Section 1983 rather than habeas corpus to file a lawsuit. However, as Clarence Hill's own case shows, lower federal courts often refuse to hear challenging methods of punishment on the ground that prisoners carry such claims late and only for the purpose of postponement. Further, the Court's decision in Baze v. Rees , upholding the lethal injection method used by many countries, has narrowed the opportunity for assistance through Part 1983.

The execution command

While an execution order was issued by a governor in several states, in large part it was a court order, issued by a judge or by the state supreme court at the request of the prosecutor.

The warrant usually specifies the day of execution. Some countries even provide longer periods, such as a week or 10 days to execute. This is intended to avoid issuing a new warrant in case of last minute execution to be vacated only days or hours later.

src: nightcap.us

Sentence distribution

In the context of the degree of total killing, the death penalty can not be said to be widely or routinely used in the United States; in recent years on average there has been about one death sentence for every 200 murder convictions.

Alabama has the highest mortality rate per capita . This is because Alabama is one of the few states that allows judges to override jury recommendations that support life imprisonment, possibly being wiped out in March 2017.

Among the states

The distribution of death penalty among states is directly proportional to the population and the extent of their killing. California, the most populous state, also has the largest mortality line with more than 700 inmates. Wyoming, which is the country with the smallest population, has only one person condemned.

But executions are more frequent (and occur sooner after punishment) in conservative countries. Texas, which is the second most populous state in the Union, performed over 500 executions during the post-Furman era, more than a third of the nation's total. California has only 13 executions during the same period, and has not existed since 2006.

Among the races

African-Americans comprise 41% of death row convicts while only contributing 12.6% of the general population. They have made 34% of what was actually implemented since 1976. However, this is a less representation of the proportion of convicted murderers; 52.5% of all murder offenders between 1980 and 2008 were African Americans. According to Amnesty International's 2003 report, blacks and whites are nearly the same number of murder victims, but 80% of people executed since 1977 are convicted of murder involving white victims.

About 13.5% of death row inmates are Hispanic or Latino, while they make up 17.4% of the general population.

Of the gender

On October 1, 2016, the Information Center for Death Penalty reported that only 54 women were sentenced to death. This represents 1.86% of the total population who died. 16 women have been executed since 1976, while 1442 men have been executed. 15,391 total ensures that legitimate executions have been conducted in the US since 1608, and this, 575, or 3.6%, are women. Women are responsible for 1/50 death sentences, 1/67 people sentenced to death, and 1/100 execution executives actually done. The countries that have executed the most women are California, Texas, and Florida. For women, the racial details of those sentenced to death were 21% black, 13% Latina, 2% American Indian, 61% white and 3% Asian.

src: harvardmagazine.com

Method

All 31 states with the death penalty gave lethal injection as the primary method of implementation.

Some countries allow methods other than deadly injection, but only as a secondary method to be used only at the request of inmates or if lethal injections are not available.

Some countries continue to use the historical three-drug protocol: anesthesia, paralysis of pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride to stop the heart. Eight states have used a single drug protocol, raising only a single anesthetic overdose on prisoners.

While some state laws dictate the necessary remedies, the majority do not, giving more flexibility to correction officials.

The pressure from anti-death activists and shareholders has made it difficult for correctional services to obtain chemicals. Hospira, the only US sodium thiopental producer, stopped producing the drug in 2011. By 2016, it was reported that more than 20 US and European drug manufacturers including Pfizer (owner of Hospira) have taken steps to prevent their drugs from being used for lethal injections.

Since then, some countries have used other anesthetics, such as pentobarbital, etomidate, or benzodiazepines that act quickly like midazolam. Many countries have purchased lethal injections from foreign producers, and most countries have made it criminal to reveal the identity of furniture makers or members of the executive team. In November 2015, California adopted regulations allowing states to use their own compounding pharmacies to make chemicals.

In 2009, Ohio approved the use of an intramuscular injection of 500 mg of hydromorphon (333-fold overdose for opioid-naÃÆ'¯ve narcotic analgesic patients is closely related to and five times stronger than morphine; this is the same as all 50-ml HP Dilaudid, the most powerful being commercially available, although the advantage of hydromorphone is that its very high solubility allows for almost haphazard concentration solutions; 500 mg hydromorphone HCl as a pure powder can be dissolved in isotonic salts in volumes as small as below 2 cc) and supratherapeutic doses of midazolam as a means backup to execute when the corresponding vein can not be found for intravenous injection.

The deadly injection was held into a constitutional method of execution by the US Supreme Court in two cases: Baze v. Rees (2008) and Glossip v. Gross (2015).

The method chosen by the infringer

In the following countries, a death row inmation with an execution order may choose to be executed by:

• Electrocution in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.
• Gas inhalation in Arizona and California.
• Firing squad in Utah.
• Hang in Washington.

In five states (Arizona, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee and Utah), alternative methods are only offered to inmates sentenced to death for crimes committed before a specified date (usually when the state shifts from previous method to lethal injection).

When the offender chooses to be executed in a manner different from the standard state method, which always injects lethal, he loses the right to challenge his constitutionality in court. View Stewart v. LaGrand , 526 US 115 (1999).

The final execution by methods other than injection is as follows (all selected by inmates):

Backup method

Depending on the state, the following alternative methods are formally provided in the event that lethal injections are either found unconstitutional by the court or are not available for practical reasons:

• Electrical shocks in Florida, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Tennessee.
• Inhalation gas in Alabama, California, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Wyoming.
• Skip shoot in Oklahoma and Utah.
• Hang in New Hampshire.

Oklahoma is the only country that allows more than two methods of enforcement in its laws, providing lethal injection, nitrogen hypoxia, electrocution and firing squads for use in that order if all previous methods are not available. The nitrogen option was added by the Oklahoma Legislature in 2015 and has never been used in judicial execution, although it is routinely used to provide painless deaths to animal euthanasia.

The three states (Oklahoma, Tennessee and Utah) have added a recent back-up method in 2014 or 2015 (or have expanded their field of application) in response to a lethal shortage of injecting drugs.

Some countries such as Florida have greater provisions relating to unavailable implementation methods, requiring their state departments to correct using "any constitutional method" if deadly injection and electric shock are found unconstitutional. It was designed not to need further legislative intervention in the event, but the provision was only applicable to legal disability (not practical).

In May 2016, a large Oklahoma jury recommended the state to use nitrogen hypoxia as the primary method of implementation and not as a mere reserve, after experts testified that the method was painless, easy and "inexpensive".

Federal execution

The method of execution of federal detainees for offenses under the Criminal Control of Violence and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 is that of the country in which the belief occurs. If the state does not have the death penalty, the judge must choose a state with the death penalty to carry out the execution.

The federal government has facilities (in Terre Haute US Correctional Institution) and rules only for execution by lethal injection, but the United States Code allows US Marshals to use state facilities and employees for federal execution.

src: nightcap.us

Execute attendance

The last public execution in the US was Rainey Bethea in Owensboro, Kentucky, on August 14, 1936.

It is the final execution in a country where the general public is permitted to attend without any restrictions imposed by law. "Public execution" is a legal phrase, defined by the laws of various states, and conducted in accordance with a court order. Similar to "public records" or "public meetings", it means that anyone who wants to attend an execution can do so.

Around the year 1890, a political movement was developed in the United States to mandate personal executions. Some countries enact laws that require execution to be carried out in "walls" or "enclosures", or to "exclude public views". Most state laws today use explicit words to prohibit public executions, while others only do so implicitly by mentioning the only authoritative witnesses.

All countries allow news reporters to witness the execution for information from the general public, except Wyoming which allows only witnesses authorized by the condemned. Some states also allow the families of victims and relatives elected by detainees to witness the execution. One or two hours before the execution, the condemned religious service is offered and to select his last meal (except in Texas that deleted it in 2011).

The execution of Timothy McVeigh on June 11, 2001, was watched by over 200 people, mostly by closed-circuit television.

src: deathpenaltyinfo.org

Public opinion

Gallup, Inc. monitored support for the death penalty in the United States since 1937 by asking "Do you support the death penalty for someone convicted of murder?" The Gallup survey documented a sharp increase in support for the death penalty between 1966 and 1994 clearly in response to the increasing levels of violent crime during this period (eg Page and Shapiro 1992.) However, with dramatic spikes in arguments questioning the fairness of punishment (since, in part, to the release of DNA of death penalty prisoners in the national media in the late 1990s (Baumgartner, De Boef, and Boydstun 2004 Decrease of Death Penalty and Innocent Discovery), support subsequently began to decrease, falling from 80% in 1994 to 66% in 2000. In addition, approval varies substantially depending on proposed target and alternative characteristics, with much lower support for placing adolescents and mentally ill to death (26% and 19%, respectively by 2002)) and for alternative imprisonment lifetime with no possibility of parole (52% in 2003) Gallup 2005). Given the fact that attitudes toward this policy are often responsive to events, target characteristics, and alternatives, conventional wisdom - that the attitude of capital punishment is not affected by change - is of course exaggerated. Thus, any analysis of the attitude of capital punishment should take into account such an attitude response, as well as their renowned resistance to change.

In a October 2016 Gallup poll, 60% of respondents said they were supportive and 37% opposed.

Pew research polls have shown declining American support for capital punishment: 80% in 1974, 78% in 1996, 55% in 2014, and 49% by 2016. The 2014 poll shows significant differences with race: 63% of whites, 40% of Hispanics, and 36% of blacks, respectively, supported the death penalty that year.

A 2010 poll found that 61% of voters would vote for punishment other than death sentence for murder. When the surveyed person is given a choice between the death penalty and life without parole for a person convicted of a capital crime, support for traditional execution is much lower than in a vote that only asks if someone does or does not support the death penalty. In 2010, for example, Gallup's polls offering options indicate 49% support the death penalty, and 46% support life imprisonment.

On the other hand, in November 2009, another Gallup poll found that 77% of Americans said that the September 11 attacks' Khalid Sheikh Mohammed should be sentenced to death if convicted, including 12 who normally opposed the death penalty when asked questions 1937. Similar results was discovered in 2001 when respondents were surveyed about the execution of Timothy McVeigh for the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 victims.

src: nightcap.us

Debate

The death penalty is a controversial issue, with many leading organizations and individuals participating in the debate. Amnesty International and other groups opposed the death penalty on moral grounds.

Some law enforcement organizations, and some rights groups support the death penalty.

The United States is one of three developed countries, still practicing the death penalty, along with Japan, Singapore.

Religious groups are broadly divided into the problem of capital punishment. The Council of North American Fiqh, a group of highly influential Muslim intellectuals in the United States, has issued a fatwa calling for a moratorium on the death penalty in the United States until various prerequisites in the legal system are met.

In October 2009, the American Institute of Law decided to reject the death penalty framework created in 1962, as part of the Criminal Code Model, "given the current difficult institutional and structural constraints to ensure a system that is at least adequate for the administration of corporal punishment". A study conducted by the institute says experience has proven that the goals of individual decisions about who should be exercised and the objectives of systemic justice for minorities and others can not be reconciled. By 2017, 159 prisoners have been released for evidence of their innocence.

Supporters of the death penalty say that the crime is a deterrent, is a good tool for prosecutors, raising communities by eliminating recidivism by executed criminals, providing "closure" for survivors or loved ones, and a fair punishment.

The highest killing rate is in the South (6.5 per 100,000 by 2016), where 80% of the executions are performed, and the lowest in the Northeast (3.5 per 100,000), with less than 1% of execution. A report by the US National Research Council in 2012 states that research that claims the deterrent effect is "fundamentally flawed" and should not be used for policy decisions.

According to a survey of the country's former and president of the country's leading academic criminology community, 88% of these experts reject the notion that capital punishment acts as a deterrent to murder. (Radelet & Lacock, 2009)

The data show that the application of capital punishment is strongly influenced by racial bias. Further, some opponents argue that it is arbitrarily applied by a criminal justice system that has been proven biased through the systemic influence of socio-economic, geographic, and gender factors. Another argument in the death penalty debate is the cost.

Various commentators predict that the death penalty is likely to disappear in the United States if Hillary Clinton was elected President of the United States in November 2016 and allowed to appoint a liberal Supreme Court Justice to replace Antonin Scalia. Because Donald Trump won and citizens in three countries voted the same day for voting action in favor of the death penalty, the columnist came to the conclusion that it would remain indefinitely.

Execute failed

One of the main arguments against the use of capital punishment in the United States is that there is a long history of failed executions. University of Colorado Boulder professor Michael L. Radelet described "failed executions" as executions that caused prisoners to suffer for long periods before they died. This leads people to believe that the death penalty is a cruel and unusual punishment. The following is a short list of examples of failed executions that have occurred in the United States.

• William Kemmler was the first person to be executed in the electric chair in 1890. After being declared dead after 17 seconds, he was found alive. The second current passed, and he died then. Execution takes 2 minutes.
• In Arizona, it took Joseph Wood 2 hours to die after being injected.
• In Alabama, Doyle Hamm's execution was canceled after a prison medical staff failed to find a blood vessel to insert a deadly syringe. They tried for two and a half hours and stabbed Hamm's skin at least 10 times.
• In Florida, Jesse Joseph Tafero has a flame from his hair when power is off.
• Wallace Wilkerson died after 27 minutes of pain after firing squad failed to shoot him at heart. Therefore, the constitutionality of the use of firing squads is questionable. The United States Supreme Court confirmed that firing squads did not violate the 8th Amendment in the case of Wilkerson v. Utah (1879).
• In New Mexico, Thomas Ketchum was beheaded when his body fell through the trap door as he was hanged.
• In Mississippi, Jimmy Lee Gray died after being in the gas chamber for 9 minutes. During the procedure, Gray thrashed and struck his head on the iron pole behind his head while trying to breathe.

src: gdblogs.shu.ac.uk

Graffiti and commutation

The largest amount of forgiveness was given in January 2003 in Illinois when the dismissed Governor George Ryan, who had imposed an execution moratorium, forgave the four death sentences and changed the sentence from the remaining 167 to a life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. When Governor Pat Quinn signed a law waiving the death sentence in Illinois in March 2011, he changed the sentence of fifteen convicts to death sentence to life imprisonment.

The previous post - Furman mass gratuity occurred in 1986 in New Mexico, when Governor Toney Anaya changed all death penalties for his personal opposition to the death penalty. In 1991, Ohio Governor, Dick Celeste, eased the sentence of eight prisoners, among them all four women in the line of state death. And during his two tenure (1979-1987) as Governor of Florida, Bob Graham, although a strong supporter of the death penalty who had overseen the first post-Furman execution as well as 15 others, agreed to overhaul the Sentence six people on the basis of doubts about guilt or disproportionate.

src: nightcap.us

Out of execution

All executions were suspended through the state between September 2007 and April 2008. At that time, the US Supreme Court was examining the constitutionality of lethal injections at Baze v. Rees . This is the longest period without execution in the United States since 1982. The Supreme Court finally upheld this method in Decision 7-2.

In addition to states that do not have valid death penalty laws, the following countries and jurisdictions are recorded that have an official moratorium, or do not execute for more than ten years, by 2018:

In addition to the above, Kansas (the last execution of 1965) and New Hampshire (the last execution of 1939) also did not execute for more than ten years, but in these countries is due to the lack of death row convicted because of the fatigue of the appeals process.

Since 1976, four countries have only executed the cursed inmates who voluntarily renounce further appeals: Pennsylvania has executed three inmates, two Oregon, one Connecticut, and one New Mexico.

In North Carolina, the execution was suspended following a decision by the state medical board that doctors could not participate in the execution, which is a requirement under state law.

In California, US District Judge Jeremy Fogel suspended all executions in the state on Dec. 15, 2006, ruled that the application used in California was unconstitutional but that could be fixed.

On 25 November 2009, the Supreme Court of Kentucky suspended the execution until the state adopted a regulation to carry out punishment by lethal injection.

In November 2011, Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber announced a moratorium on execution in Oregon, canceled the planned execution and ordered a review of the death penalty system in the state.

On February 11, 2014, Washington Governor Jay Inslee announced a moratorium on the death penalty. All cases of death sentence coming to Inslee will result in him issuing a reprieve, not a pardon or a substitution.

On February 13, 2015, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf announced a moratorium on the death penalty. Wolves will issue a reprieve for every execution until the death commission, set up in 2011 by the Pennsylvania State Senate, produced a recommendation. Effectively there is a moratorium in place, because the state has not executed anyone since Gary M. Heidnik in 1999.

src: arabcooking.me

See also

• The debate on the death penalty in the United States
• Death sentence by the United States federal government
• The death penalty by the United States military
• Death penalty for teenagers in the United States
• Judgment of the United States Supreme Court on the death penalty
• List of executed executors in the United States by 2018
• List of people executed in the United States
• List of inmates of death penalty in the United States
• A list of recent executions in the United States by crime

src: mail.harvardmagazine.com

References

• Marian J. Borg and Michael L. Radelet. (2004). On failed execution. In: Peter Hodgkinson and William A. Schabas (eds.) Capital Punishment. pp.Ã, 143-168. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511489273.006.
• Gail A. Van Norman. (2010). Doctor participation in execution. In: Gail A. Van Norman et al. (eds.) Clinical Ethics in Anesthesiology. pp.Ã, 285-291. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511841361.051.

src: media1.britannica.com

Further reading

Books

• Bakken, Gordon Morris, ed. (2010). Invitation to Execution: The History of Death Penalty in the United States . University of New Mexico Press
• Banners, Stuart (2002). Death Penalty: American History . Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-00751-4.
• Bessler, John D. (2012) Cruel and Unusual: American Death Penalty and the Eighth Amendment of Founders . Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press;
• Blecker, Robert (2013). The Death of Punishment: Seeking Justice among the Worst of the Worst . St. Martin's Press;
• Delfino, Michelangelo and Mary E. Day. (2007). Death Penalty USA 2005-2006 Publishing MoBeta, Tampa, Florida. ISBN 978-0-9725141-2-5; and Death Penalty USA 2003-2004 (2008). Publishing MoBeta, Tampa, Florida. ISBN 978-0-9725141-3-2.
• Dow, David R., Dow, Mark (eds.) (2002). Death Machine: The Reality of the American Punishment Regime . Routledge, New York. ISBNÃ, 0-415-93266-1 (fabric), ISBNÃ, 0-415-93267-X (paperback) (Providing a critical perspective on the death penalty)
• Garland, David (2010). Weird Institution: American Death Penalty in the Era of Removal . Harvard University Press.
• Hartnett, Stephen John (2010). Democratic Executor, Volume 1: Capital Punishment and Making America, 1683-1807 . East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press.
• Hartnett, Stephen John (2012). Implementing Democracy, Volume 2: Capital Punishment and Making America, 1635-1843 . East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press.
• Lane, Charles (2010). Fixed Execution: Saving the Death Penalty from Nature . Rowman & amp; Littlefield Publisher.
• Megivern, James J. (1997), Death Penalty: A Historical and Theological Survey . Paulist Press, New York. ISBNÃ, 0-8091-0487-3
• Osler, Mark William (2009). Jesus on Death Row: The Trial of Jesus and American Capital Punishment . Abingdon Press. ISBNÃ, 978-0-687-64756-9
• Prejean, Helen (1993). Dead Man Walking . Random House. ISBNÃ, 0-679-75131-9 (paperback)
  (Explaining the case of death row convicted Elmo Patrick Sonnier, while also providing an overview of issues related to the death penalty)

Journal article

• Vidma, Neil and Phoebe Ellsworth. "Public Opinion and Death Penalty" (Archive). Stanford Law Reviews . June 1974. Volume 26, pp.Ã, 1245-1270.
• Hoffmann, Joseph L. (2005). "Protecting the Unbeliever: Report of the Board of Governors of Massachusetts". 95 J. Crime. L. & amp; Criminology 561.

src: america.aljazeera.com

External links

• Prisoners Run under Civil Authority in the United States, by Year, Territory, and Jurisdiction, 1977-2016 Bureau of Justice Statistics
• United States: Worldwide Death Penalty An academic research database of legal, practice, and statistics of the death penalty for every country of the world's death penalty.

Source of the article : Wikipedia