Is Capital Punishment Effective Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Is Capital Punishment Effective - search Example2). However, sound insurance policy should not be based on what is popular. Rather, the best indicator that dandy penalisation makes sense from a public policy perspective is arguably its success as a deterrent of crime.The deterrent effect of capital punishment has been debated for some time. Studies on the extent to which the death punishment actually causes a decrease in the incidents of murder and other violent crime have produced merge results. Nevertheless, recent moves by several renders to impose moratoria on capital punishment have offered a bracing opportunity to assess the impact of a suspension of the death punishment. For the first time, it has been possible to directly equalise and contrast violent crime statistics in several jurisdictions both pre- and post-moratorium. This has shown a clear and substantial correlation between elimination of capital punishment and increase in incidents of murder.This paper discus ses the evolution and current state of capital punishment in the United States. It will survey the seminal Supreme Court cases on the topic and will consider empirical evidence that substantiates the effect of the death penalty as a deterrent. Not only is the death penalty appropriate within a democratic society in which the overwhelming majority of people support it but it is also a reasonable public policy choice given the evidence substantiating its deterrent effect.The 20th Century was a very dynamic period for application o... unishment declined somewhat in the 1940s and 1950s, executions were still much more frequent than forthwith approximately 130 a year in the 1940s and 75 a year during the 1950s, compared to an number of 48 per year in the 1990s. Over 65% of the American public approved of the death penalty during these decades (Dezhbakhsh & Shepherd, par.10). The 1950s and 1960s witnessed a decline in support for the death penalty, with its lowest point advent in at 4 2% in 1966. Opposition to the death penalty increased because of growing doubts almost the morality of the death penalty, awareness of Western Europes abandonment of capital punishment, abatement of the 1930s crime wave, escape of deterrence evidence, widespread belief in the racially discriminatory use of the death penalty, and increasing apprehension intimately the arbitrariness of death penalty sentences (par. 11). The number of executions began to decline, reflecting the drop in public support.The movement of states apart from mandatory death sentence statutes and toward discretionary statutes whereby juries had the power to decide whether or not a cross case warranted the death penalty led to an arbitrary application of capital punishment that raised questions about its constitutionality. This period culminated in the Supreme Courts Furman decision, 408 U.S. 238, in which the Court held that the imposition and carrying out of the death penalty in these cases constitute cr uel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments (Furman v. Georgia, 1972). The holding in Furman essentially found that discretionary capital statutes resulted in arbitrary sentencing, violating the Eighth Amendments cruel and unusual punishment clause. This decision effectively voided the death penalty statutes of all