Capital Punishment

Capital Punishment also known as, the death penalty/sentence. This has been an issue in the American judicial system for longest time. The death penalty can be dated all the way back to Hammurabi’s time period, “date as far back as the Eighteenth Century B.C. in the Code of King Hammurabi of Babylon, which codified the death penalty for 25 different crimes. “ it was first used mainly in the European countries and found its way to the Americas when the European settlers came by. They enacted the death penalty here in the Americas. “In the early 1960s, it was suggested that the death penalty was a "cruel and unusual" punishment, and therefore unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment”. Over the years there were cases where the decision of death penalty was questions for example Trop v. Dulles and so in some cases they began to fine tune the sentence a little, such as in U.S. v. Jackson. In the end it was suspended but over the years it was reenacted and then suspended. So since there has been such a split view on this topic, state judicial systems have split as well. If you look at the states in the present there are some places where they still pass the death sentence, close to over half of the United States allow for the death sentence to be practiced.

What constitutes an act to be of capital punishment? “The New York Colony instituted the Duke's Laws of 1665. Under these laws, offenses such as striking one's mother or father, or denying the "true God," were punishable by death.” (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/part-i-history-death-penalty), but over the years it changed around. So now since capital punishment is only allowed in certain state, capital crimes are different state by state. For example, “Arizona. First-degree murder accompanied by at least 1 of 14 aggravating factors, Kansas. Capital murder with 8 aggravating circumstances” (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/crimes-punishable-death-penalty), which makes it very difficult it seems. So, an individual can do one act in one state and not be trialed for it, but in another it could be illegal. It just seems to be unfair and unequal if the judicial system is like this. It is still an on going discussion, we have our federal criminal crimes and then our state, and there is a difference. Over the years our number of death row has gone down, but it may be rising again.