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Death Penalty Essay: Capital Punishment In The United States

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Capital Punishment Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, was and is to this day a very controversial topic. So much that it was suspended in the United States in 1972 and that lasted until 1976 as a result of the Supreme Court’s decision in Furman v. Georgia. Legal Defense and Education Fund (LFD) looked at capital punishment because of the racially prejudiced way it was being governed. During that time Capital punishment was referred to as the “final act of the {black} Civil Rights movement”. Capital punishment was not ruled unconstitutional, just the way in which it had been administered was unconstitutional. When it became reinstated in 1976, new death penalty law took two forms. One was “mandatory” death penalty statute. This process mandated capital punishment on conviction for certain crimes. The …show more content…

All over the U.S. and around the world, it is biased and is used disproportionately against different minorities within our communities. Since people make mistakes, there will always be that risk that a person would be executed by mistake. Furthermore, the cost associated with putting a person on death row is making each state think twice about using this flawed and unjust system. More than twenty years ago this country got on board with experimenting with new death penalty statutes aimed toward correcting the injustices and uncertainty of the past concerning the death penalty. There now is an abundance of evidence, in the form of statistics, expert opinion, and personal accounts, which clearly signifies that the death penalty remains contaminated with injustices such as race, economics, local politics, and many other factors that have nothing to do with the specified purposes of capital punishment. After twenty years it is fair to conclude, with retired Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, "the death penalty experiment has

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