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Since ancient times capital punishment has been used to punish a wide variety of offences. The Bible prescribes death for murder and many other crimes, including kidnapping and witchcraft.
By 1500 in England, only major felonies carried out the death penalty for such capital offences as treason, murder, larceny, burglary, rape, and arson. Some common methods of execution at that time were boiling, burning at the stake, hanging, beheading, and drawing and quartering.
The Death Penalty in America
When European settlers came to the new world, they brought the practice of capital punishment. Great Britain influenced America's use of the death penalty more than any other country.
By 1800, however, Parliament had enacted many new capital offences, and hundreds of persons were being sentenced to death each year.
Reform of the death penalty began in Europe with the abolitionist movement by the 1750s, and was championed by such thinkers as the Italian jurist Cesare Beccaria, the French philosopher Voltaire, and the English law reformer Jeremy Bentham. They argued that the death penalty was needlessly cruel, overrated as a deterrent, and occasionally imposed in fatal error. In Cesare Beccaria´s essay On Crimes and Punishment (1767) he theorized that there was no justification for the state to take a life. Along with Quaker leaders and other social reformers, they defended life imprisonment as a mare rational alternative.
Nineteenth Century
In the early Nineteenth Century, many states reduced their number of capital crimes and build state penitentiaries.
In the United States the death penalty for murder was first abolished in Michigan (1846), Venezuela (1853) and Portugal (1867) were the first nations to abolish it altogether. Today, it is virtually abolished in all of Western Europe and most of Latin America. Elsewhere-in Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East (except Israel)-most countries still authorise capital punishment for many crimes.
Twentieth Century
It was the first half of the Twentieth Century that marked the beginning of the "Progressive Period" of reform in the United States. Nine states abolished the death penalty for all crimes or strictly limited it to rarely committed crimes of treason and first-degree murder. By the 1930s American abolitionist movement lost support as Americans suffered through Prohibition and the Great Depression. At this point of time executions reached the highest levels in American history.
Constitutionality of the Death Penalty in America
In 1967, executions were suspended to allow the courts of appeal to decide whether the death penalty was unconstitutional. In 1972, the Supreme Court ruled in Furman V. Georgia that the death penalty for murder or for rape violated the prohibition against "cruel and unusual punishment" if it was too severe for a crime, if it was arbitrary, if it offended society's sense of justice, or if it was not more effective than a less severe penalty. The Court argued that there are problems with the role of jurors and their discretion in capital cases that lead to
"freakish" irregularity. So the use of capital punishment was "arbitrary" and "cruel". On June 29, 1972, for the first time in U.S. history, the Supreme Court effectively voided 40 death penalty statutes and suspended the death penalty.
Most of the states enacted new death penalty statutes. Some states removed all of the jury discretion by mandating capital punishment for those convicted of capital crimes. Other states provided sentencing guidelines for the judge and jury when deciding whether to impose death. However, in 1976 the Supreme Court in Gregg v. Georgia held that these statutes are not unconstitutional (Gregg decision). Capital status now typically authorise the trial court to impose sentence (death or life) only after a post conviction hearing, at which evidence is submitted to establish which "aggravating" or "mitigating" factors were present in the crime. If the "aggravating" factors prevail and the sentence is death, then the case is automatically reviewed by an appellate court. The final reform from Gregg was proportionality review, a practice that helps the state to identify and eliminate sentencing disparities.
In 1977, however, the Supreme Court also ruled that the death penalty for rape of an adult woman was an unconstitutional punishment when the victim was not killed (Coker v. Georgia).
In 1988, a new federal death penalty statute was enacted for murder in the course of a drug-kingpin conspiracy. Since its enactment, 6 people have been sentenced to death for violating this law, though none has been executed.
In 1994, President Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act that expanded the federal death penalty some 60 crimes, only 4 of which do not involve murder. The four exceptions are espionage; treason; drug trafficking in large amounts; and attempting, authorizing, or advising the killing of a public official, juror, or witness in cases involving a continuing criminal enterprise.
Two years later, in 1996, President Clinton signed the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. The Act, which affects both state and federal prisoners, restricts review in federal courts by establishing tighter filing deadlines, limits the opportunity for evidentiary hearings, and allows only a single habeas corpus filing.
George W. Bush, governor of Texas since 1994, supports the death penalty for murderers at the age of 17 and older. Bush is confident that none of 112 executed were innocent. In his 6 years as governor, Bush has presided over the executions of 111 men and 1 woman, far more than any other governor. By any measure, his commitment to capital punishment is unquestioned. By law, the governor alone cannot commute a death sentence. But Bush has appointed every member of the parole board that can make that decision, and eliminated parole for violent criminals. Bush signed a law speeding the appeals process -and, therefore, executions. Bush changed Texas' clemency process, so that there is only a death penalty clemency for bad process not for repentance. He supports death penalty as a deterrent.
Bush said in 1998, "For the 4 years I've been governor, I am confident we have not executed an innocent person, and I'm confident that the system has worked to make sure there is full access to the courts."
(New York Times; Jan 7, 2000)
Karla Faye Tucker, the one and only woman who received a death sentence under Bush, did not argue that she was innocent or that she had been deprived of her legal rights. She asked for mercy as reward for a life redeemed through faith. Bush cited his duty to carry out the execution: "My responsibility is to ensure our laws are enforced fairly and evenly without preference or special treatment," he said. "I have concluded judgments about the heart and soul of an individual on death row are best left to a higher authority."
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