Capital Punishment

Capital Punishment

History of Capital Punishment

When the first European settlers arrived in colonial America, they brought with them the British tradition of capital punishment. The earliest recorded use of the death penalty in the New World was in the colony of Virginia in 1622, when one Captain George Kendall was executed for the crime of treason. The death penalty was accepted as just punishment for a variety of offences in the American colonies, but there are two striking differences between the use of the death penalty in Britain at the time and the use of the death penalty in the colonies. The first difference is found in the number of crimes for which the death penalty could be imposed. By 1760, Great Britain considered more than 100 offences to be punishable by death, whereas the laws of the majority of the colonies listed fewer than a dozen capital offences each. The numbers of capital crimes varied from colony to colony, but in most cases the laws describing capital offences were accompanied by biblical quotations that were understood to justify the use of the death penalty. Crimes that carried a sentence of death in the colonies included, but were not limited to, witchcraft, rape, perjury, adultery, and murder. The rationale behind the relatively small number of crimes punishable by death in colonial times was the colonies' constant need of able-bodied workers to farm the land and participate in construction (Bohm 1999).

The second difference between Britain and colonial America in terms of capital punishment is seen in the methods of execution employed. Whereas in Britain such methods as drawing and quartering, beheading, and breaking on the wheel were still in use, the colonies utilized hanging, a method that the colonists considered to be relatively humane (Costanzo 1997).

Efforts to Abolish the Death Penalty

Although the founding fathers accepted the death penalty, many colonists were opposed to its use. In this regard, the movement to abolish the death penalty can be traced to the effort of the Quakers in Pennsylvania and, more specifically, to Benjamin Rush, a physician and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. The Quakers, who were opposed to capital punishment, were instrumental in the passage of the Great Act of 1682, which limited the use of the death penalty to the crimes of treason and murder. Rush, who would later found a movement to abolish capital punishment, argued not only that the use of the death penalty brutalize society, but that putting people to death was an improper use of state power (Costanzo 1997). Rush drew his ideas from the positivist writings of Cesare Beccaria, whose treatise On Crimes and Punishment ([1767] 1975) has been credited with influencing European thought concerning the death penalty, leading to a reduction in the number of crimes punishable by death in European countries as well as the reduction of barbarism in criminal law and procedure in general. Beccaria believed that the death penalty does not serve as a deterrent to crime because it is ...