Capital Punishment Dbq

Capital punishment, or better known as the death penalty, had made its first appearance with the Babylonians through “the Code of Hammurabi”, the first written set of laws and punishments in history. It has since spread worldwide and evolved to fit the customs and traditions of numerous civilizations as time progressed, which explains why some states in America today have implemented some form of Capital Punishment. Used only for the most vile offenses, Capital Punishment may seem appropriate for those who have done the unthinkable. However, it is unclear where we draw the line between whether or not one should be submitted to the death penalty based on the magnitude of the offense. The Supreme Court’s decision in Atkins v. Virginia had helped

The Eighth Amendment states that “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and excessive punishments inflicted”, which overall serves to protect the rights of criminals (source #5). The idea behind the phrase “Cruel and unusual” allows the interpretation of the Eighth Amendment to be significantly more flexible compared to other Amendments to meet the requirements of changing times. Therefore, as time progresses, society reforms its standard of decency, which generally leads to disparities between the views and treatments of offenders from different time periods (Source #4). This principle is prominent when comparing Penry v Lynaugh and Atkins v Virginia. Although both cases deal with mentally disabled offenders who were both charged with murder, the fact that the number of states that banned the execution of disabled offenders had increased from 2 to 18 between the 13 years between the time of these cases, shows the evolution in public opinion, or more specifically, the shift from disregarding a mental state of an offender, to sympathising with how they are not able to feel or understand certain ideas and feelings (Source #3). This example shows that overall, the Eighth

Two-thirds of the Supreme Court Justices, had voted against capital punishment for the mentally ill based on the argument about how the mentally handicapped have a lower capacity of understanding their actions and consequences, and therefore are not able to fully understand the reasons for their sentences. Dissenting opinions were filed by Justice William H. Rehnquist, Justice Antonin, and Justice Clarence Thomas; their arguments were based off the case of Penry v Lynaugh, a roughly similar situation compared to Atkins v Virginia which had occurred about 13 years prior. These Justices claim that the Eighth Amendment does not directly state that the execution of the mentally ill classifies is cruel and unusual punishment, but rather they believe that the decision was based off a bias opinion rather than an interpretation of the Amendment (Source #2). These dissenting justices also believed that a law that would generally prohibit all states from executing any mentally ill offenders would be unsuitable, as a case by case method of determining whether or not capital punishment would be applied would better suit circumstances regarding mentally handicapped offenders, since the degree of the crime and mental capacity are both variable and can change from case to case (source #3). The