Capital Punishment Essay: Is The Death Penalty Constitutional?

Is the Death Penalty Constitutional?
The death sentence has been the capital punishment in America since its creation. To this day, the death sentence remains, with small changes to make it more appropriate for the modern day. For instance, only murder committed under special cases can warrant the sentence, and beyond that, no minors or mentally ill people can be given the death sentence. Even with these modifications, was the death sentence ever truly constitutional? Many different opinions exist surrounding this topic, but when taking the evidence of history as well as the constitution and current world into consideration, it is clear that the death sentence is indeed constitutional. Before delving into the modern world, the past can help

A number of other things have changed that refined the death sentence and made it more useable and fair. For instance, in the court case Stanford v Kentucky, the court law changed, establishing that someone under the age of 16 could not receive the death sentence. This change was expanded upon in 2005 with Roper v Simmons, when the death sentence was extended to not allow any minors to be executed. This change in the death sentence may seem strange at first, but it actually acts to make the death sentence more constitutional, but still keeping the core values. The idea behind the change is that as minors, or undeveloped adults, teens and children may not be able to fully grasp the weight of their actions and because of that, the death sentence cannot be given. This idea of the death sentence not being given to those who don't understand the severity of their actions can be carried over to another court case, Atkins v Virginia. Atkins was sentenced to death, but it was argued that he was mentally disabled and because of that, it would be unconstitutional to sentence him to death. Both of these cases show that the death penalty has changed not only to be more fitting of today's society but also changed to streamline the sentence and truly make it so that only those who are truly deserving of the sentence receive it. So now the sentence is shown to only come to those who deserve it, but even if someone “deserves it” was it ever constitutional in the first place? The short answer is