Media and Other Individuals From Essay

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In fact, when actual harm seems imminent, the government has more leeway to restrict the speech. Fighting words or words likely to result in harm to an individual fall into this category. The most notorious example is shouting "Fire" in a crowded theater. A more realistic example is the criminalization of terroristic threats.

2) in an essay of at least two well-developed paragraphs, explain how laws related to capital punishment have changed since the early 1970s

At the beginning of the 1970s, capital punishment was legal throughout the United States, though execution rates varied tremendously by state. However, in 1972, in the case of Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972), the Supreme Court suspended capital punishment throughout the states. The Court found that capital punishment violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. However, it is important to realize that the violation did not come from the actual executions, but from the way that the states carried out their capital punishment procedures. Therefore, beginning in 1976, many states retooled their capital punishment laws and, once again, began sentencing defendants to death.

Since 1976, the capital punishment statutes of many states sought to address the Court's concerns that capital punishment was arbitrary. Some states adopted mandatory capital punishment statutes for certain types of murder, though those were later found to be unconstitutional.

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Other states adopted bifurcated proceedings, where guilt and punishment were established in separate stages. To determine whether or not to impose the death penalty, juries were called upon to consider aggravating and mitigating factors. In 1977, the Court determined that the death penalty violated the Eighth Amendment if imposed for rape, setting the standard that only murder could be a capital offense in state tribunals, though treason, espionage, and certain military crimes may still be capital offenses. There have been various challenges to the means of execution, so that executions must be carried out in as painless and humane manner as possible. The rules surrounding executions remained fairly consistent from the late 1970s until the early 2000s. However, in the early 2000s, two cases placed major restrictions on capital punishment, which brought the United States more into alignment with international humanitarian standards. First, the Court prohibited the execution of mentally retarded individuals. Next, the Court prohibited the execution of those who were minors at the time of commission of the offense. While all of these changes have not eliminated the death penalty and have been based on the premise that state-sanctioned executions are not unconstitutional, they shown an increasing awareness of the human rights issues.....

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