Capital Punishment Capital punishment is when a person's life is taken because of a crime they commited. It is the severest sentance that a court can put upon a convict. This type of punishment has been around for as long as historical documents show. It is a sad fact that faces our entire world today.
In North America, the death penalty was around since before the American Revolution.
But after the American Revolution Willian Penn allowed only murder and treason to be punishable by death. After Penn died, the English law was changed. The new law made fourteen crimes punishable by death. In 1794 Pennsylvania once again changed the law to only people commiting murder having to be punished with the death penalty. All the other olonies at the time followed Pennsylvania's lead (Morse, 135).
The death penalty then was not argued until the 1960's. In the 1960's there were only 13 states in the United States that had abolished the death penatly.
English: Total number of executions carried out in...
US gas chamber usage
Article 2 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of ...These 13 states had gotten rid of the death penalty before they entered the Union. Ohio was not on this list.
In 1972 the Supreme Court ruled that the death penatly was against the eighth ammendment. Therefore captial punishment was illegal, temperarily. In 1976 captail punishment was once again okayed.
Between 1930 and 1960 there were 3859 executions in the United States alone. The crimes that people commited to recieve this punishment were rape, murder, armed robbery, kidnaping, burglary, aggravated assult, and espionage (Morse, 136).
Captial punishement does not only effect the United States, though. Currently there are more than 70 nations that have abolished captial punishment. Some of the more popular ones are Canada, Costa Rica, Italy, Mexico, Switzerland and Norway (Morse, 136).