Capital Punishment

Capital Punishment

Capital Punishment is the legal infliction of the death penalty. In the United States, capital punishment is legal in thirty-nine of its fifty states (Death). Beginning in 1973, prison populations began to rise at a surprising growth. There were 204,211 inmates in 1973, and by 1977, the number of prisoners had grown to 285,456, which later grew to 315,974 in 1980 (Death). By 1976, it became clear to authority that the death penalty must be reinstated. America's twenty-one year experiment with capital punishment has resulted in a total of 392 executions (Death). Out of this large number, seventy-eight took place in 1996 alone (Death). Of these however, only thirty-four were classified as federal cases in which thirty- two were male and only two were female (Death).

Every year only about 15,000 murderers are charged in their specific case. Out of this only about 300 will become on death row (Death). The death row population is constantly increasing however as its numbers reach more than 3,000 (Death). Due to constant appeals from family and opponents of the elimination procedures, a person on death row could typically count on five to eight years before finally get executed (Death). In order to abrogate all prisoners on death row, it would acquire thirty people executed for the next seven years.

Crimes such as aiding in suicide, forced marriage, performing an abortion resulting in death, espionage, rape, homicide, child molesting resulting in death and conspiracy to kidnap for ransom among many others are, in numerous states, crimes that are punishable by death (Death). What the law permits, however, is not typically used by the courts or the higher authorities. Most executions are results of a murder or rape, and a small number for robberies, espionage, assault, burglary, and kidnapping (Death). However in the US, the death penalty is currently authorized in one of five ways. This includes hanging, electrocution, gas chambers, firing squad and lethal injection (Death). Hanging has been the traditional method of execution throughout the English-speaking world although is hardly used in recent years (Death). Electrocution was introduced by New York State in 1890 and is the second most popular method (Death). The gas chamber which was first adopted by Nevada in 1923 but was not widely used until the 1940s (Death). The firing squad was also a traditional method but is now used only in Utah and Idaho (Death). Lastly, lethal injection was introduced in 1977 by Oklahoma and is the most common form of execution in the United States (Death).

Capital punishment is legal in all states except Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Rhode Island, and Vermont (Death). Out of the thirty-nine remaining states, lethal injection is legal in thirty two states, electrocution in ten states, the gas chamber in five states, hanging in three states and the firing squad in two states (Death). Although some states use more than one method, most immobilize to one. In states where the death penalty is legal however, twelve have never performed an execution. With a total of 127, Texas leads the United States in executions (Death). Florida and Virginia follow in ranking but with a large difference by only thirty nine executions per state as of 2002 (Death). Texas also has the most inmates on death row with a remarkable number of 448 while California is a close second with 444 (Death). New York, New Hampshire and Wyoming are currently the sole states with no criminals on death row as of 2002 (Death). It is also unimaginable to see how African-Americans, which constitute only twelve percent of the United States population, are an astonishing forty percent of inmates on death row (Death).

An example of a state criminal who was condemned to capital punishment includes Rolando Cruz a man from Chicago (Thomas). He was sentenced to death in 1985 for the abduction, rape, and murder of ten-year-old Jeanine Nicarico (Thomas). Due to the prosecution basing its case on a vision statement, the conviction was overturned. There was another man however who had actually confessed to the murder but was never allowed to testify and Cruz was convicted again. Cruz's conviction was overturned once more and it was not until a third trial that DNA evidence cleared his name (Thomas). Rolando Cruz was finally acquitted and released in November of 1995 after eleven years on death row and three trials (Thomas). Another example was on June 13, 1997, a former Ku Klux Klan member, Henry Francis Hays, was killed outside Mobile, Alabama by high voltage which penetrated into his brain (Pro-Death). He was convicted in 1981 for abducting, brutally beating and cutting, and finally strangling a black teenage boy named Michael Donald (Pro-Death). Hays and his accomplices received life imprisonment but Hays was the only person executed (Pro-Death). A long sixteen years later Hays was finally executed. The execution however went virtually unnoticed as only ten people gathered outside the prison gates as the press barely covered it (Pro-Death). Federal prisoners currently on death row include David Rolando Chandler, a cultivator of cannabis, who was convicted in May 1991 for hiring an assassin to kill a police informer (Thomas). Also Cory Johnson, Richard Tipton, and James Roane Jr. were three narcotics dealers that were sentenced to death in 1988 for a string of murders designed to expand their dealing territories (Thomas).

As the rate of executions increase, some claim that the death penalty is unfair on moral issues. Race also seems to have become a debated topic as forty percent of death row inmates are African-American. However an overwhelming majority of capital cases involve crimes committed against people who are Caucasian. African-Americans who commit crimes worthy of the death penalty are sentenced to death at a far higher rate than the opposite situation. In America, the primary objection to capital punishment includes that it has always been used unfairly. This can be covered in three distinct points. First, women are rarely sentenced to death and executed, even though 20 percent of all homicides in recent years have been committed by women (Campaign). Second, a disproportionate number of nonwhites are sentenced to death and executed (Campaign). Third, poor and friendless defendants, who obtain inexperienced or court-appointed counsel, are most likely to be sentenced to death and executed (Campaign). Defenders of the death penalty, however, believe that discrimination is not a sufficient reason for abolishing the death penalty. Although the Supreme Court and legions of federal and state lawmakers back capital punishment, the American Bar Association still believes that executions should stop until reforms are enacted (American).

No one today questions the necessity