The Death Penalty

The Death Penalty: The Discrimination Within         Throughout Americas chronicle, the destination penalty has been applied disproportionately to the poor and nastys. The termination penalty, approved execution, has existed as long as has human culture. Capital Punishment, the conclusion penalty, is punishment by finish. This is the practice of the gas chamber, electrocution, lethal injection, hanging, or firing squad in the United States. In constraining cultures, this sentence is reserved for the most severe crimes, murder, violent familiar assault, and treason. But in some times and places, in twain simple and sophisticated societies, punishments for many crimes have been abnorm ally severe, so far including end for stealing a loaf of lollipop or writing derogatory songs about notables.         In Americas history black and poor defendants have always been sentenced to death and penalise below the belt and disproportionately in t erms of population. For example, of the 455 criminals put to death for rape after(prenominal) 1930 in southern states, 405 were black (Monagle 15). The U.S. Supreme beg in 1972 recognized this discrimination when it ruled in Furman v. atomic number 31 that courts were applying the death penalty optionally, in violation of the Eight and fourteenth Amendments by sentencing blacks to death. Justice William O.

Douglass stated: The discretion of judges and juries in high-flown the death penalty enables the penalty to be selectively applied, nutrition prejudices against the accused if he is poor and despised and lacks policy-making gar deject or if he is a mem! ber of a umbrageous or unpopular minority. (Latzer 235) This ruling, in essence, stopped all executions for some(prenominal) 2 years. States, fearing that the Supreme Court would overturn death sentences on the basis of discrimination, temporarily discontinued executions and scurried to revise and reintroduce their death penalty statutes. By 1975, thirty-three states had revised their statutes, enabling them at a time again to execute criminals (Laurence xvii).         At... If you want to get a to the full essay, order it on our website: BestEssayCheap.com

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