Louisiana , and the Court commented that the death penalty could no longer be applied for any crime against an individual where no death occurred. The question of whether the death penalty might be used for crimes against the government, such as treason or espionage, remains unsettled. Many states allow all those who participated in a felony in which a death occurred to be charged with murder and possibly face the death penalty, even though they may not have directly killed anyone.
The case of unarmed accomplices in a bank robbery in which an employee is killed is a typical example of felony murder. Prisoners have also raised claims that the aggravating circumstances that make a crime eligible for the death penalty are too broad, with some state death-penalty laws encompassing nearly all murders, rather than reserving the death penalty for a small subset of murders.
Compilations of state laws are available, along with notable court decisions regarding this issue. Exercising an. State, So. Statute has not been repealed but appears unconstitutional. See Welsh v. Federal capital statutes for non-murder crimes no one on death row for such offenses.
Espionage 18 U. For the Media. For Educators. Fact Sheet. Introduction The death penalty in the United States is used almost exclusively for the crime of murder. Louisiana Aggravated rape of a child under 13; La. Georgia Carnal knowledge of a female who is less than 10 presumes force; Ga. Military 10 U. Federal capital statutes for non-murder crimes no one on death row for such offenses Espionage 18 U.
Statute covers all ages of victims, but has specific provisions if the victim is 12 or under. Aggravated rape of a child under 13; La. Q : Isn't the Death Penalty necessary as just retribution for victims' families? Q : Have strict procedures eliminated arbitrariness and discrimination in death sentencing?
Poor people are also far more likely to be death sentenced than those who can afford the high costs of private investigators, psychiatrists, and expert criminal lawyers. Indeed, capital punishment is "a privilege of the poor," said Clinton Duffy, former warden at California's San Quentin Prison. Some observers have pointed out that the term "capital punishment" is ironic because "only those without capital get the punishment.
Furthermore, study after study has found serious racial disparities in the charging, sentencing and imposition of the death penalty. People who kill whites are far more likely to receive a death sentence than those whose victims were not white, and blacks who kill whites have the greatest chance of receiving a death sentence.
Minorities are death-sentenced disproportionate to their numbers in the population. This is not primarily because minorities commit more murders, but because they are more often sentenced to death when they do.
Q : Maybe it used to happen that innocent people were mistakenly executed, but hasn't that possibility been eliminated?
Since , people in 25 states have been released from death row because they were not guilty. In addition, seven people have been executed even though they were probably innocent. A study published in the Stanford Law Review documents capital convictions in this century, in which it was later proven that the convict had not committed the crime. Of those, 25 convicts were executed while others spent decades of their lives in prison. Fifty-five of the cases took place in the s, and another 20 of them between l and l Our criminal justice system cannot be made fail-safe because it is run by human beings, who are fallible.
Executions of innocent persons occur. Q : Only the worst criminals get sentenced to death, right? A : Wrong. Although it is commonly thought that the death penalty is reserved for those who commit the most heinous crimes, in reality only a small percentage of death-sentenced inmates were convicted of unusually vicious crimes.
The vast majority of individuals facing execution were convicted of crimes that are indistinguishable from crimes committed by others who are serving prison sentences, crimes such as murder committed in the course of an armed robbery. The death penalty is like a lottery, in which fairness always loses. Who gets the death penalty is largely determined, not by the severity of the crime, but by: the race, sex, and economic class of the prisoner and victim; geography -- some states have the death penalty, others do not, within the states that do some counties employ it with great frequency and others do not; the quality of defense counsel and vagaries in the legal process.
Q : "Cruel and unusual punishment" -- those are strong words, but aren't executions relatively swift and painless? A : No execution is painless, whether botched or not, and all executions are certainly cruel. The history of capital punishment is replete with examples of botched executions. Lethal injection is the latest technique, first used in Texas in l, and now mandated by law in a large majority of states that retain capital punishment.
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