Furman Vs Harvard Case

Capital punishment is the legalized killing of criminal offenders based on the severity of the crime. We can trace capital punishment as far back to the eighteenth century. The King of Babylon, Hammaurdi wrote a set of codes for twenty-five crimes. If they were broken you could be killed. Killing during this time was more severe than it is now. For example, you could steal someone’s animal and your punishment, would be either; beating till death, drowning, or even to go as far as being burned alive.

To fully understand capital punishment, we have to look at some prominent cases. There are four different cases that had a substantial effect on their state and the United States itself. Furman V. Georgia (1972), William Furman was in the process

Troy Gregg was convicted of robbery and mass murder, and jurors sentenced to him to death. He fought this sentencing, just like in the Furman case the defense attorney said that they had violated his eighth and fourteenth amendment. The Supreme court in a seven to two decision found that there was no violate unlike in the Furman case. They argued that “when a defendant has been convicted of deliberately killing another, the careful judicious use of the death penalty maybe be appropriate if used carefully” (Oyez 2017 Gregg v. Georgia). Georgia still to this day uses the death penalty and as of January 2017 fifty-seven men are waiting to be

Radeler and Traci L. Locock conducted their own research. They titled it “Do Executions Lower Homicide Rates?” In 2008 they sent questions to some of the top criminologist and one of the questions found that “eighty-nine percent of the criminologist don’t think that the death penalty is effective.” (Radeler , Locock 2009 pg. 501). The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is one of the key fighters trying to get rid of the death penalty. The ACLU believes that the “state shouldn’t give itself the right to kill human beings especially when it kills with premeditation.” (ACLU The case against the death penalty). In a research study by Richard Dreser from the Death Penalty Information Center (1995). Many chiefs of police and attorneys believed that capital punishment wasn’t an effective crime deterrent. Willie Williams a police chief from Los Angles, California said “I am not convinced that capital punishment in and of itself is a deterrent to crime, because people do not think about the death penalty before they commit a violent crime.” (Dieter