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In the American colonies, legal executions began around the 1630's. They began with public executions within America and England. The death penalty was given to many for simple crimes and was common during this time.
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Public executions are common. Many people attend these hangings and executions both in America and England. Slowly, start to reduce executions for only murder chargers, rather then for any offense.
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Many people in America and Europe begin to want to abolish the death penalty. Michigan abolished their death penalty and other states such as Wisconsin follow suit.
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Many places such as western European nations and Canada begin to abolish the death penalty. This push began stronger after World War 2 when many people wanted to end this killings spree. It became that the United States was the only last western democracy to allow executions.
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in the 1950s to 1960s there began a lot of protests against executions. The number of execution slowly slowed down and it became rare to see executions. There were no executions between 1968 through 1976.
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In 1972 in the case of Furman V, Georgia they found capital punishment to be unconstitutional. They felt as though it violated the 8th amendment as cruel and unusual punishment and inconsistent of who was given the death penalty or not. The court had said they would allow new laws around capital punishment to be mad as long as they had clearer standards.
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In 1972-1976, 35 new states created new laws approved by the supreme court. It allowed more clearer rules for the execution and evidence needed for the punishment to be put into place. It created the law that they would only allow for the punishment if the crime was truly horrible and had aggravating circumstances.
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Starting in 1977, executions began rising up and it became more popular once again. Even with new rulings, there was still problems with if the laws were being applied equally to everyone. This led to many prisoners on death row and became an increasing amount of waiting people for equal treatments around the death penalty.
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In 1987, they began a study to see how black men were treated on death row compared to white men. It had been seen that Georgia had racially discriminated against people in the 1970s regarding the application of the death penalty. But, even with this evidence the justices ruled that there wasn't enough evidence to totally get rid of the death penalty even with the statistics.
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In this case in 2005, the case argued if carrying out under age exceutions was constitutional or not. Many argued it was against the 8th amendment to the death penalty for anyone under 18. The case found this as constitutional in which only three states had carried out executions in the last decade for anyone under 18.