Death Penalty Essay: Capital Punishment In The United States

What is Capital Punishment? Capital Punishment is often referred to as the death penalty, it has been used as a method of crime deterrence since the earliest societies. The death penalty is a government authorized practice where a person is put to death by the state as a punishment for a crime (crime museum.org). The death penalty laws date far back as the Ancient Laws of China, it has been accustomed as a discipline for crimes. In 18th century B.C. the Code of King Hammurabi of Babylon systematized the death penalty for twenty-five crimes, but not including murder. The death penalty started in Britain and influenced America’s use of the death penalty more than any other country (deathpenaltyinfo). Capital Punishment was part of the fourteenth century B.C’s Hittite Code, seventh century B.C’s Draconian Code of Athens, death was the only punishment for all crimes committed, and the fifth century B.C’s Roman Law of the Twelve Tables. Hanging grew to become the usual tactic of execution in Britain in the 10th century A.D. William the Conqueror would only allow people to be hung or executed for any crime, excluding in times of war (deathpenatlyinfo). 222

Before then, the fifth, eighth, and fourteenth Amendments were clarified as allowing the death penalty. Though, in the early 1960s, it was proposed that capital punishment was a “cruel and unusual” punishment, hence it was unconstitutional under the eighth amendment (deathpenaltyinfo). In 1958, the Supreme Court had came to a conclusion in Trop v. Dulles that the eighth Amendment held an “evolving standard of decency that marked the progress of a maturing society.” Though this case was not a death penalty case, abolitionists applied the Court’s reasoning to executions and preserved that the United States had, indeed proceed to a point that its “standard of decency” should no longer condone the death