Constitutional Issues on Death Penalty

In the United States, jacket penalization as state policy has found government agency for both proponents and opponents. The Fifth Amendment references capital crimes in passing, which would seem to assume unquestioningly the political validity of the practice. The Eighth Amendment, however, specifically forbids " reprehensible and unusual punishment," and the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868 largely to foster the rights of freed slaves, specifically forbids the states to "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person inwardly its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Whereas the language of the Constitution in Amendments Five and Fourteen seems to presume that capital punishment is a government option, the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment in the Eighth Amendment and the "equal protetion" reference in the Fourteenth up to(p) the way for debate on how to implement Constitutional viands appropriately. In the 19th century, the debate over capital punishment was conducted on religious grounds, more or less extraneous the judicial system. In 1843, for example, two New York preachers took up the topic death-penalty abolitionists in a well-attended public debate. In 1845 in her garner from New York, columnist Lydia Maria Child questioned whether capital punishment was morally right just because it was established policy (Morris an

Capital punishment endorsers decry wrong to victims and survivors of not having or using the penalty.

Van den Haag argues that the effect of debate over capital punishment should concern those who are guilty, not the presence or absence of judicial actus reus (284-5). In other words, injustice lies not in improper execution but in allowing capital criminals to escape. There is also a view that capital punishment is a curb to crime. Only if anticipation of punishment is severe enough are criminals deterred from committing capital crimes (Bailey 671ff).

Gray, Mike. The Death Game: Capital Punishment and the mint of the Draw. Monroe, Maine: Common Courage P, 2003.

Bedau, H. A. The Death Penalty in America. wampum: Aldine Publishing Company, 1964.

Berlow, Alan. "Wrong man: The Prospect That Innocent pot Will Be Executed in America Is horrifyingly Likely, Argues This Unsparing Report." The Atlantic Monthly 284 (November 1999): 68-79.

Morris, Cynthia, and Bryan Vila, eds. Capital Punishment in the United States: A Documentary History. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood P, 1997

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