THIS year marks the 40th anniversary of Gregg v Georgia, the Supreme Court case that reintroduced the death penalty to America. Capital punishment had been halted in 1972 when five justices determined it to be “arbitrary and capricious” in violation of the bar on “cruel and unusual punishments” in the eighth amendment. But four years later, the court found that new state laws had mended the death penalty’s main defects, and the executioner was called back from retirement. In the first few years following Gregg, only a handful of people were put to death. By 1999, the number of executions reached a peak of 98 before beginning to fall again after the century’s turn. Thus far in 2016, only 20 people have been executed in America, the fewest since 1984.
As executions dwindle, the discussion about America’s system of capital punishment has shifted. Less energy is devoted to debating the death penalty’s supposed purposes of deterrence and retribution; more discussion, and litigation, revolves around peripheral issues like exempting children and the intellectually disabled from capital punishment, the relative roles of juries and judges in issuing...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/2i5L5CG
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