The constitutionality of the death penalty

THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF THE DEATH PENALTY

The Supreme Court of the United States has the authority to decide whether state statutes conflict with the provisions of the Constitution and the Court 's prior interpretations of those provisions . This power of judicial review has given the Supreme Court the crucial responsibility to assure individual rights , as well as to maintain a living Constitution ' whose broad provisions are continually reviewed and applied to complicated new situations . Since Justices are appointed for life , when the Supreme Court rules on an issue involving the interpretation

of the U .S . Constitution , that judgment is final unless altered by a constitutional amendment or the Court 's subsequent ruling (Booklet . The Court decides whether specific state statutes are applied rightly or whether a person 's Constitutional rights have been violated

The Constitutionality of the death penalty in the United States has been decided by the Justices of the Supreme Court based on cases appealed from different states . The people who founded the United States came from England and European countries where there had always been a death penalty . This does not mean there are no reasons for states to abolish the death penalty just that it is currently legal for the states to have this punishment

The present controversy started when the Supreme Court decided in Furman v . Georgia , 408 U .S . 238 (1972 , that imposition and carrying out of the death penalty in the cases before it constituted cruel and unusual punishment and violated Mr . Furman 's rights under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments . There was no argument that Mr . Furman committed a violent murder . The problem was that the Georgia statute used to sentence him to death was badly written . An extremely severe punishment was being imposed in an arbitrary and capricious manner . The Georgia statute was too general to prevent discrimination against Mr . Furman by the judge and jury by reason of his race , religion wealth , social position , or class (Furman ,

. 240

In that case , the Supreme Court basically believed that the state legislatures should carefully draft and pass statutes providing objective standards for imposing the death penalty . When the Furman case was decided , the states whose death penalty statutes were appealed provided no specific and logical guidelines for which accused person would be executed . The death penalty was eliminated as a punishment option in all states until new statutes were enacted providing those objective standards and procedures to guide , standardize , and make rationally reviewable the process for imposing the death sentence (Furman ,

. 241

This year , the Supreme Court held Kansas ' capital murder sentencing statute constitutional in Kansas v . Marsh , U . S . opinion No . 04-1170 [not yet in a bound volume] (2006 . The Kansas legislature rewrote its statute to narrow the class of death-eligible defendants on a rational and logical basis . It also let the jury deciding on the penalty decide the sentence . The Kansas statute was re-written to let that jury consider any and all mitigating evidence about the defendant , and...