A History of the Death Penalty in America

A History of the Death Penalty in America by Thomas Adcock The American experience in capital punishment is a kaleidoscope of legislative vogue, adaptive judicial wisdom, religion (both stern and merciful), political passion and race—played out against the backdrop of “evolving standards of decency,” a debatable progressive impulse suggested by the Supreme Court in 1958 in Trop v. Dulles. In four centuries of life with the death penalty, Americans have been without this legal means of dispatching society’s killers, traitors, and lesser miscreants for a scant four years—from 1972 when the Supreme Court abolished capital punishment in Furman v. Georgia until 1976 when it was reinstated by way of Gregg v. Georgia, a decision said to inspire a new generation of equitable death penalty statutes. At one time or another, all states have held the death penalty to be just and legal. Over time, some legislatures did away with executions altogether, altered means and conditions, or imposed moratoria until amendments designed to avoid constitutional or procedural challenge could be affixed to the desired fatal effect. Notwithstanding the Supreme Court and the Eighth Amendment, government-sponsored premeditated killing is nowadays seen by most nations of the developed world as inherently cruel. In October of 2009, the European Union called on the United States to “heed domestic and international calls to bring an end to the death penalty [and] admit that [its] use has been a failed experiment with a very high cost in human suffering and inestimable damage to the country’s standing and image in the world as a beacon for human rights and democratic values.” State and federal executions continue apace, however. And circumstances leading to executions remain as capricious and variable as ever. Expand Article A History of the Death Penalty in America by Thomas Adcock The American experience in capital punishment is a kaleidoscope of legislative vogue, adaptive judicial wisdom, religion (both stern and merciful), political passion and race—played out against the backdrop of “evolving standards of decency,” a debatable progressive impulse suggested by the Supreme Court in 1958 in Trop v. Dulles. In four centuries of life with the death penalty, Americans have been without this legal means of dispatching society’s killers, traitors, and lesser miscreants for a scant four years—from 1972 when the Supreme Court abolished capital punishment in Furman v. Georgia until 1976 when it was reinstated by way of Gregg v. Georgia, a decision said to inspire a new generation of equitable death penalty statutes. At one time or another, all states have held the death penalty to be just and legal. Over time, some legislatures did away with executions altogether, altered means and conditions, or imposed moratoria until amendments designed to avoid constitutional or procedural challenge could be affixed to the desired fatal effect. Notwithstanding the Supreme Court and the Eighth Amendment, government-sponsored premeditated killing is nowadays seen by most nations of the developed world as inherently cruel. In October of 2009, the European Union called on the United States to “heed domestic and international calls to bring an end to the death penalty [and] admit that [its] use has been a failed experiment with a very high cost in human suffering and inestimable damage to the country’s standing and image in the world as a beacon for human rights and democratic values.” State and federal executions continue apace, however. And circumstances leading to executions remain as capricious and variable as ever. Expand Article A History of the Death Penalty in America by Thomas Adcock The American experience in capital punishment is a kaleidoscope of legislative vogue, adaptive judicial wisdom, religion (both stern and merciful), political passion and race—played out against the backdrop of “evolving standards of decency,” a debatable progressive impulse suggested by the Supreme Court in 1958 in Trop v. Dulles. In four centuries of life with the death penalty, Americans have been without this legal means of dispatching society’s killers, traitors, and lesser miscreants for a scant four years—from 1972 when the Supreme Court abolished capital punishment in Furman v. Georgia until 1976 when it was reinstated by way of Gregg v. Georgia, a decision said to inspire a new generation of equitable death penalty statutes. At one time or another, all states have held the death penalty to be just and legal. Over time, some legislatures did away with executions altogether, altered means and conditions, or imposed moratoria until amendments designed to avoid constitutional or procedural challenge could be affixed to the desired fatal effect. Notwithstanding the Supreme Court and the Eighth Amendment, government-sponsored premeditated killing is nowadays seen by most nations of the developed world as inherently cruel. In October of 2009, the European Union called on the United States to “heed domestic and international calls to bring an end to the death penalty [and] admit that [its] use has been a failed experiment with a very high cost in human suffering and inestimable damage to the country’s standing and image in the world as a beacon for human rights and democratic values.” State and federal executions continue apace, however. And circumstances leading to executions remain as capricious and variable as ever. Expand Article