CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

Should Capital Punishment Be Legal?

Should Capital Punishment Be Legal?

Introduction

Capital punishment continues to be used in the United States despite the controversy surrounding its merits and its effectiveness as a deterrent to serious crime. A sentence of death may be carried out by one of five lawful means: electrocution, hanging, lethal injection, gas chamber, and firing squad. As of 2009, 36 states employed capital punishment as a sentence. In 2007 New Jersey became the first state in modern history to repeal the death penalty. New Mexico followed by repealing its death penalty statute in 2009. Other jurisdictions that do not allow the death penalty are Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin, as well as the District of Columbia.

 The first known infliction of the death penalty in the American colonies occurred in Jamestown Colony in 1608. During the period of the Revolutionary War, capital punishment apparently was widely accepted—162 documented executions took place in the eighteenth century. At the end of the war, 11 colonies wrote modern constitutions, and, although nine of them did not allow CRUEL AND UNUSUAL punishment, all authorized capital punishment. In 1790, the First Congress enacted legislation that implemented capital punishment for the crimes of robbery, rape, murder, and forgery of municipal securities. The nineteenth century saw a dramatic increase in the use of capital punishment with 1,391 documented executions. The death penalty continued as an acceptable practice in the United States for some time.

The Costs of Capital Punishment

In 1989 the state of Florida executed 42-year-old Ted Bundy. Bundy confessed to 28 murders in four states. During his nine years on death row, he received three stays of execution. Before he put to death in the electric chair, Bundy cost taxpayers more than $5 million. In a country where some 65 percent of the population favors the death penalty, many people may feel that Bundy got what he deserved. A further question, however, is whether U.S. taxpayers got their money's worth. (David, 1995)

Moreover, in Florida, the state Supreme Court spends half of its time reviewing death penalty cases. If a case advances farther in the state or federal appeals process, the costs continue to rise. Appeals of a death sentence guarantee considerable expense to the taxpayer, as the state pays both to defend and to prosecute death row inmates. Public defenders in such appeals openly admit that their goal is delay, and prosecutors and state attorneys slow ...