Death Penalty

Indiana University

The Death Penalty

Criminal Justice 303, Summer 1

Kayla Janko

June 22, 2016

        The harshest sentence of all time; the death penalty. It is the severest form of correctional punishment since it does allow us to take the life of an offender. The death penalty is one of the most controversial topics within the corrections system. Many people favor the death of a human for punishment while others believe it violates our eighth amendment, “cruel and unusual punishment.” This method is execution style most commonly led by lethal injection. Hanging, electrocution, and any other forms of capital punishment have been slowly disappearing over the years because of unfair treatment.

        The death penalty first established in the eighteenth century B.C in the Code of King Hammaurabi. Most of these death row criminal cases could be executed for twenty five different crimes by crucifixion, hanging, drowning, burning, beheading, quartering, etc. From there, the concept spread throughout the world. When European settlers traveled to America, they brought the use of capital punishment (specifically the death penalty for criminal cases) which greatly influenced America’s practice of the method. The Jamestown colony of Virginia case was the first documented use of the death penalty in the U.S thus far. George Kendall was caught working as a spy for Spain in 1612 which was a major violation back then. The governor of Virginia, Sir Thomas Dale, had created the law that allowed the death penalty for even minor infractions like petty theft after Kendall’s case.

        Later on in the nineteenth century, penitentiaries were being built in many states which led to a decrease in the number of death penalty cases. Pennsylvania had built the most popular correctional facility at the time which opened in 1829. The purpose was to correct the behavior of criminals by secluding inmates without taking their lives. It was to also deter the public from viewing the death penalty as a social gathering. This new idea became popular and quickly spread throughout the world but the death penalty still lingered for larger cases such as murder.

        The twentieth century had changed the outlook on execution altogether. Six states within the United States had officially banned the death penalty because of the cruel treatment these offenders were receiving. The revolution took place in this era though which drove five of those states to reestablish the death penalty law because of their fear of capitalism taking over. The late twentieth century was when many people were questioning that the death penally could be violating our eighth amendment. Abolitionists went to court fighting that the death penalty was inhumane and sat through many cases that suggested juror’s opinions on the subject could be unreliable, recommendations of juror’s could be problematic, and so fourth. At the end of this uproar, the court had denied the abolitionists interest in ending the death penalty because it was out of their control and there wasn’t any reasons for doing away with the method anyways.