Capital Punishment and the Constitution in the United States
Capital Punishment in the United States: Capital Punishment and the Constitution
For the first 150 years of U.S. history, the federal government played a minor role in setting policy toward the death penalty. The majority of states provided capital punishment and executions were common until the late 1950s. Some states abolished capital punishment at their own initiative, beginning with Michigan in the late 1840s. By 1965, 13 states had no death penalty, and the number of executions in those states that retained capital punishment laws had drifted downward from 199 in 1935 to 7. The reduction in executions in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s paralleled declines that were taking place in Europe and countries formerly affiliated with Britain.
By the mid-1960s, a growing debate over abolition of capital punishment had shifted from state legislatures to the federal courts. Opponents of the death penalty initiated a series of lawsuits contending that the death penalty as administered in the United States violated several amendments to the U.S. Constitution. These cases alleged that capital punishment violated the 14th Amendment, which prohibits the government from depriving citizens of life, liberty, or property without “due process of law,” as well as the 8th Amendment, which forbids cruel and unusual punishments.
In the 1972 decision of Furman v. Georgia, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that allowing a jury unlimited discretion to choose between a death sentence and a prison sentence for a convicted criminal constituted cruel and unusual punishment. This ruling invalidated every state death penalty statute, because all of the states that retained capital punishment in 1972 used a standardless system, in which the jury received no guidance in deciding sentences. As a result, an official moratorium on executions was initiated that year and continued until 1976.
Following the Furman decision, states quickly passed new death penalty legislation. Most of the new statutes still gave juries discretion to choose between prison and the death sentence. However, the laws also restricted the types of murder for which the death penalty could be imposed. In addition, the new statutes provided instructions on factors that judges and juries should take into account when deciding between prison and death. In the 1976 case of Gregg v. Georgia the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that such systems of guided discretion did not violate the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Soon after that case was decided, 35 states had passed laws providing systems of guided discretion in death penalty cases. The first execution under these laws was that of Gary Gilmore by firing squad in Utah in 1977. Gilmore’s execution launched the modern era of capital punishment in the United States. (1)
The Capital Punishment contents in this American legal encyclopedia also includes: Capital Punishment Distribution of Authority, Capital Punishment and the Constitution, Capital Punishment Current Conditions, Capital Punishment Delay, Efficiency and Fairness, Capital Punishment Disparity in Application and Capital Punishment Conflicting Efforts at Reform. For a worldwide overview click here
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