Death Penalty News

When it comes to imposing the death penalty, the United States has long outpaced North American neighbors Canada and Mexico, according to the director of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project. Cassandra Stubbs, speaking Friday at the 2018 ABA Midyear Meeting in Vancouver, told the audience of "A North American Perspective on the Death Penalty: The American, Mexican and Canadian Experiences" that while the death penalty was legal in Mexico and Canada during the early-to-mid 20th century, neither country actually carried out many death sentences. Stubbs said Mexico has long had antipathy toward the death penalty, partially because it is a predominantly Catholic country. Between 1908 and 1961, only 11 people were executed; and the last civilian execution took place in 1937. Though the penalty remained on the books until 2005, no one was executed after 1961. Canada conducted its final execution in 1962 and fully abolished the death penalty in 1998. In contrast, Stubb...

Hidalgo's team is asking the court to strike down Arizona's death penalty and rule on the constitutionality of capital punishment nationwide. 45 years ago, a case came before the United States Supreme Court that led to the temporary strike down of the death penalty. Now, the court has the opportunity to take up another case that could transform - or even end - the death penalty in America. In 1972, a black man named William Henry Furman was caught, mid-burglary, by a homeowner in Georgia. Furman attempted to flee and in doing so tripped and fell, causing the gun he was carrying to fire and kill the resident. Furman v. Georgia asked the Supreme Court if the imposition (and carrying out) of the death penalty in Furman's case constituted cruel and unusual punishment, in violation of the 8th and 14th Amendments. The answer, in a 5-4 decision, was yes. Justices William Douglas, Potter Stewart and Byron White came to the conclusion that entrenched racial biases cau...

The legal reasoning behind the continued use of the death penalty AMERICA is one of only a few countries in the Western world that still puts criminals to death. Even there, executions are on the wane: just 20 were carried out in 2016, down from a peak of 98 in 1999. Popular support is declining, too. Just 60% of Americans approve of the death penalty for murder, down from 80% in the 1990s. Only eight states have carried out an execution since 2015, and around two-thirds either have abolished capital punishment or have a moratorium on its use. But it has not disappeared altogether: during an eight-day stretch in April, Arkansas executed four people, so as not to waste its expiring supply of a lethal-injection drug. And last month in Alabama, a man who spent 35 years on death row—and eluded seven execution dates—was finally put to death. Why does America continue to execute people? Following the Supreme Court’s 1972 ruling in Furman v Georgia , capital punishment was put on h...