Capital Punishment (Death Penalty) and Mentally Retarded In July 2002, the United States Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional to execute mentally retarded prisoners. This ruling reflects a shift in the Court's previous position, when it ruled in Continue Reading...
The debate over the death penalty remains and the Supreme Court will most likely be asked decide such cases for years to come. Summary and Conclusion The purpose of this discussion was to examine several landmark Supreme Court cases and explain th Continue Reading...
Death Penalty Evolution of the Death Penalty in Supreme Court Jurisprudence Capital punishment has been in existence for centuries. As early back as the Eighteenth Century B.C., the use of the death penalty was found in the Code of King Hammurabi ( Continue Reading...
Death Penalty for Juvenile Offenders Supreme Court by a majority decision on March 1, 2005 in Roper v. Simmons held that death penalty for juveniles was "cruel and unusual" and as such the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution fo Continue Reading...
, 2010, p. 428). In a country where Blacks represent only 13% of the population, as of 2010 they made up "twenty-eight of the fifty-seven (49%) of inmates on federal death row," Cohen writes on page 428. Speaking of the "geography of the federal dea Continue Reading...
Death penalty has been a long-contested issue among States, legislators, policy makers, and individuals alike. So complicated is the issue that no two opinions appear to be the same. Indeed, the divergence of the various opinions extend to a variety Continue Reading...
death penalty and minors - recent Supreme Court finding Death Penalty was extensively applied in the olden times across the world. The modern crusade for banning of capital punishment started in the 18th century with the writings of Montesquieu and Continue Reading...
A good example is the 1985 murder of convenience store clerk Cynthia Barlieb, whose murder was prosecuted by a district attorney bent on securing execution for Barlieb's killer (Pompeilo 2005). The original trial and all the subsequent appeals force Continue Reading...
Execution of the Mentally Retarded: How the Law Was Changed Jim Ellis a hero to some people. You can't say he got the law changed single-handedly, but without him and his strategy, it might never have happened. Ellis is a law professor at Universit Continue Reading...
Moreover, in Perry v. Louisiana, 498 U.S. 38 (1990), the Court used that decision to bolster Louisiana's attempts to forcibly medicate a prisoner in order to make him death-eligible. If one agrees that the death penalty is a just penalty for one who Continue Reading...
Capital Punishment Like abortion, the institution of capital punishment is a very divisive topic. The line dividing the supporters and opponents of capital punishment is variably drawn across political philosophies, race, sex and religion. The Gover Continue Reading...
" This article puts forward the notion that when analyzing the "...relationships between minority groups and mainstream populations," the issue of whether the use of "formal control is applied fairly and consistently between these different groups" Continue Reading...
Capital Punishment: Does it Reduce Crime? Capital Punishment is a social controversy that epitomizes the axiom "an eye for an eye." In the United States there are 38 states that utilize the death penalty, and usually for select crimes, including tr Continue Reading...
Death Penalty The debate surrounding capital punishment is not as clear as one might think -- in fact, there is a great deal of gray within this debate. The actual definition is State controlled taking of a human life in response to some crime commi Continue Reading...
Through which he concluded that each execution prevents around seven or eight people from committing murder (Worsnop 402). In 1985, an economist from the University of North Carolina by the name of Stephen K. Layson published a report that showed th Continue Reading...
Death Penalty In the city of New Orleans, murder is an epidemic; one cannot watch a local news program or read a newspaper without hearing of another murder. The deaths and their attendant toll on families and loved ones are devastating, but the im Continue Reading...
Regardless of social status, defendants who are poorly represented by their attorneys are more likely to receive death sentences than those who are zealously represented by counsel. (in Opposition to the Death Penalty: Arbitrariness and Discriminati Continue Reading...
Execution for Committing a Non-Homicide Sex Crime The last execution of an individual found guilty for committing a non-homicide sex crime occurred 50 years ago. The use of the death penalty against such offenders was halted partly because of claims Continue Reading...
Capital Punishment in Texas Khalil, Samy. "Doing the impossible: Appellate reweighing of harm and mitigation in capital cases after Williams v. Taylor, with a special focus on Texas." Texas Law Review, 80(1): November 2001. Proquest Database. In th Continue Reading...
Criminal Justice: The Death Penalty Reasons for topic selection Causes of racial prejudice and discrimination Juvenile in delinquent society theory Culture and values Official and unofficial values The effectiveness of the death penalty The de Continue Reading...
She answered that no one had condemned her. Jesus then said to her, "Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin" (John 8:11). Because the woman was not stoned in the end, many interpret it to mean that Jesus Continue Reading...
Furthermore, while the Supreme Court has recently been proactive about protecting groups that have historically been especially vulnerable to the death penalty, such as the mentally retarded and the mentally ill, there is no reason to believe that t Continue Reading...
" (Potter, 1999) Supreme Court finally strikes down juvenile executions On Mar. 1, 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down once and for all juvenile executions in the United States, abandoning nations such as Nigeria, Congo, China, Pakistan and ot Continue Reading...
Thus, execution of the mentally retarded is not only illegal, but immoral as well. Sue Gunawardena-Vaughn of Amnesty International wants to expand this logic to include the mentally ill, stating, "Severely mentally ill people are not the worst of th Continue Reading...
In Woodson v. North Carolina, the Court held that an offense may not carry a mandatory capital punishment sentence, concluding that it violated both the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments because it precluded consideration of factors such as the defe Continue Reading...
An interesting and similar development in juvenile justice is the issue of life imprisonment as a cruel and unusual sentence for juvenile offenders. This issue is addressed by Mark Sherman (2009). Sherman states that Joe Sullivan was 13 years old w Continue Reading...
(Streib online) Regardless of the source of the ethical view there is rising tides that express the evolving attitude that the death penalty, in any case is not a deterrent and is ethically wrong, regardless of the crime or the circumstances of it. Continue Reading...
Women and the Death Penalty Analysis An Analysis of the Historical Effect of Gender and Race on the Application of the Death Penalty in the United States While the debate over capital punishment continues to rage in the United States, questions of Continue Reading...
Racial Discrimination and the Death Penalty The United States Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that at the end of the year 2000 that there was 1,381,892 total number of prisoners under the jurisdiction of federal or state Continue Reading...
The most notable provision of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution is the prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishments.” Several arguments waged against the death penalty invoke the Eighth Amendment and claim that capital punish Continue Reading...
It appears that they were not aware of the situation with Williams when it came to the mental illness and the child abuse, but it is also possible that they kept silent about the issue against an attorney that they knew to be incompetent in order to Continue Reading...
adults have an episode or two from their youth of which they are not extremely proud. Perhaps it involved sneaking a beer (or several beers) at a social function, or lying about one's plans for the evening to get permission to attend a questionable Continue Reading...
Tabak). Wrongful Executions Are Likely There have been cases where people are convicted and sentenced to death although they were innocent and committed no crime. "In the United States not only do countless men and women get arrested for murders t Continue Reading...
NCJRS The death penalty is back in the media again. Scott Peterson, convicted of murdering his wife and his nearly full-term unborn child, received the death sentence. This sentence had been recommended by the jury who convicted him. Peterson was im Continue Reading...
Specifically, Singleton's case was denied review by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003, and he was executed in Arkansas on January 6, 2004. As noted in the lower court's dissent: "Treating the prisoner may provide short-term relief but ultimately result Continue Reading...
Supreme Court's recent decision to ban the execution of mentally challenged individuals raises important ethical issues. Judges must be able to determine if a person is indeed mentally challenged. While the legal system and psychology have made impo Continue Reading...
4. Retributive justifications for punishment- such as theories about making punishment "fit" what the crime or criminal "deserves" have been criticized on grounds that they assume we know a lot more than we do. For example, it is notorious that dif Continue Reading...
For example, they should be required to complete at least 20 hours of training on brain disorders. It is ideal if consumers and family members become part of the activity and process. It must also be emphasized that, in most cases, dangerous or viol Continue Reading...
4, para.2). Therefore, the presence of an underlying mental illness that did not render a defendant unable to appreciate that he was committing a crime or compel him to commit it, may still be sufficient to mitigate the crime. Furthermore, a lack of Continue Reading...
In March of 2005, she was finally removed from life support and died thirteen days later. The case had 14 appeals, numerous motions, petitions and hearings in Florida courts, five suits in the Federal District Court; Florida legislation struck down Continue Reading...
