This page was created by Tara Green,
a Master's Degree student in the Department
of Criminal
Justice,
New
Mexico State University. This web page was
submitted in August 2003 as partial fullfillment of
the requirements
of CJ 532, Civil Liberties
in Criminal
Justice.
Introduction
The death penalty has been the topic of heated discussions for a long
time. The death penalty has never been illegal
in America and, despite recent controversy over its effectiveness,
does not appear to be headed for extinction anytime soon. Domestic approval for the death penalty remains well over
sixty percent. In fact, the closest execution has ever
come to being illegal was back in 1972, when the Supreme
Court, in its 5-4 decision Furman vs. Georgia,
struck down the capital punishment statutes of 39 states.
Although the court ruled that the death penalty violated
the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual
punishment, it emphasized that it was only illegal in
the way it was then administered. Execution itself, it
said, was not unconstitutional.
The
debate that rages today is an appeal to our practical
sense, with supporters arguing that the death penalty
works and opponents rushing to prove them wrong. The
opponents are right, of course, but they are winning
the argument on the wrong terms. They have said we’re
spending too much money, possibly killing the wrong people,
and not deterring crime. Underlying this is acceptance:
if we can spend less money, deter crime, make sure we
kill the right people, than it might be okay. We
as a society in general have become so concerned about
whether it works that we have forgotten to ask whether
it should exist at all.
At
the center of the death penalty debate lays the Eighth
Amendment, the constitutional clause that prohibits “cruel
and unusual” punishment. It is a problematic mass of
words, because its meaning is necessarily relative. How
does one define “cruel?” History offers us little guidance,
much of what was considered acceptable at the time the
Constitution was written would be considered appalling
today. Some
consider capital punishment to be the ultimate denial
of civil liberties. The ACLU opposes capital punishment under
all circumstances because it violates the constitutional
ban on cruel and unusual punishment, is administered
arbitrarily and unfairly, and fails to deter crime or
improve public safety.
When,
in Gregg vs. Georgia,
the Supreme Court reaffirmed capital punishment, it offered
in its majority opinion a justification for the morality
of the death penalty, and calling it “an expression of
society’s outrage at particularly offensive conduct.”
The
instinct for retribution is part of the nature of man,
and channeling that instinct in the administration of
criminal justice serves an important purpose in promoting
the stability of a society governed by law. When people
begin to believe that organized society is unwilling
unable to impose upon criminal offenders the punishment
they “deserve,” then there are sown the seeds of anarchy.
Many
would argue that the death penalty is race driven, and
the people most affected are the minorities. The race
of the victim is often a decisive factor in capital sentencing
decisions. Almost all death sentences in this country 81
percent involve white victims. 178 black people have
been executed for killing a white person, but only 12
white people have been executed for killing a black person.
Seen in this light, the death penalty represents a failure
of democracy or more accurately,
a democracy on the brink of totalitarianism.
Whether
you are for or against the death penalty the following
websites offer valuable and insightful information on
various facts and points of view.
Death Penalty
Articles
and Links The
Death Penalty Information Center is a non-profit organization
serving the media and the public with analysis and information
on issues concerning capital punishment.
www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/
Comprehensive
list of links compiled by the Derechos human rights project.
www.derechos.org/dp/
An
overview of death penalty law with links to key primary
and secondary sources.
www.law.cornell.edu/topics/death_penalty.html
A
comprehensive site on capital punishment and the death
penalty debate in Alaska and the US, presenting resources
on both sides of the issue.
www.uaa.alaska.edu/just/death/
Contains
many of the latest pro-death penalty articles.
www.dpinfo.com/dpnews.htm
Current
news and information, US and international links to abolition
sites.
www.smu.edu/~deathpen/
Anti-Capital
Punishment Resources from the ASC’s Critical Criminology
Division.
http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~critcrim/dp/dp.html
Articles
on various aspects of the death penalty, including
history and costs.
http://www.againstdp.org/articles.html
Articles
on the Death Penalty Debate, World Trends and
Capital Punishment in the U.S.
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/RefArticle.aspx?refid=761570630
Official
committees submitted this report with recommendations
about cost and representation quality in capital
cases. Has a table of contents.
www.uscourts.gov/dpenalty/1COVER.htm
Provided
by Amnesty International's abolition program, this
index lists countries employing capital punishment,
specifying the means of each.
www.amnestyusa.org/abolish/methww.html
Links
to full text Death Penalty articles and reports.
www.schr.org/deathpenalty/articles.html
Links
to full text recent articles on the Death Penalty.
www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=132&scid=17
Series of pro-death penalty articles
dealing with topics such as racism, recidivism, deterrence,
and expanding the death penalty.
http://www.ncpa.org/pi/crime/crime33b.html#E
This
site provides news and information about capital punishment
in the U.S. The page offers resources for activists,
as well as updates on federal and state legislation regarding
capital punishment.
www.aclu.org/DeathPenalty/DeathPenaltyMain.cfm
This
annual report provides information on those under sentence
of death, including information on the offender's sex,
race, Hispanic origin, education, marital status, and
age at time of arrest for capital offense. The report
also provides information on methods of execution, trends,
and time between imposition of death sentence and execution.
Historical tables present executions since 1930 and sentencing
since 1973.
www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/cp99.htm
News,
background information, and links on the death penalty.
www.policyalmanac.org/crime/death_penalty.shtml
Related
Articles
Capital
Punishment 2000 (US Bureau of Justice Statistics:
December, 2001)
Arguments
For and Against the Death Penalty (Michigan State
University)
The Death Penalty (NewsBatch.com)
Facts and Figures About
the Death Penalty (Amnesty International)
History of
the Death Penalty (Michigan State University)
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