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Jan 1, 1500
The Code of King Hammurabi of Babylon 1800 B.C
Actual Date: Eighteen Century B.C. In Eighteenth Century B.C., the first death penalty laws were placed in the Code of King Hammurabi of Babylon, there were 25 different crimes classified for the death penalty. The death penalty included beating to death, burning alive, impalement, crucifixion, and drowning. -
Period: Jan 1, 1500 to
History of Capital Punishment
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May 28, 1506
Britain Execution Laws
Actual Date: Tenth Century A.D- Sixteenth Century A.D Britain's common method of execution was hanging in the Tenth Century A.D. William the Conqueror would only allow the hanging of people in war times. By the Sixteenth Century, it had changed and under Henry VII 72,000 people were estimated to have been executed. "Some common methods of execution were boiling, burning at the stake, hanging, beheading, and drawning and quartering" (Introduction to the Death Penalty, 2012). -
First Execution in America
In 1608, Captain George Kendall's execution was the first ever recorded in the Jamestown colony of Virginia. -
Divine, Moral and Martial Laws
"In 1612, Virginia Governor Sir Thomas Dale enacted the Divine, Moral, and Martial Laws, which provided the death penalty for even minor offenses such as stealing grapes, killing chickens, and trading with Indians" (Introdution to the Death Penalty, 2012). Death Penalty laws differed from colony to colony. -
The First Reformers
1776-1800
Between 1776-1800, the first reforms of the death penalty took place. Thomas Jefferson along with four others undertook a mission to revise Virginia's laws, propping that the death penalty only be used for treason and murder. "On Crimes and Punishment, published in English in 1767 by the Italian jurist Cesara Beccaraia, whose exposition on abolishing capital punishment was the most influetial of the time, had an especially strong impact" (Reggio, 2012). -
First State to Abolish the Death Penalty
The Abolitionist movement gained momentum in the early to mid-Nineteenth Century. Most of the states condensed the number of uses for the death penalty. Pennsylvania was the first state to move executions into private settings in 1834. In 1846, the first state to abolish the death penalty for all crimes except treason was Michigan. After Michigan abolished it, Rhode Island and Wisconsin abolished it for all crimes. -
The Progressive Period
The first part of the Twentieth Century was marked as the "Progressive Period" of reform in the U.S. with Ameria just entering World War I, people started panicking about the threat of war. As a result of this, by 1920, five of the six abolitionist states reinstated their death penalty. -
Cyanide Gas
The use of cyanide gas for execution was introdcued in 1924. There was a rebirth in the use of the death penalty between the 1920s and 1940s. "There were more executions in the 1930s than in any other decade in American history, an average of 167 per year" (Introduction to the Death Penalty, 2012). -
"Cruel and Unusual" Punishment
Before the 1960s, the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments were construed as permitting the death penalty. "However, in the early 1960s, it was suggested that the death penalty was a "cruel and unusual" punishment, and therefore unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment" (Introduction to the Death Penalty, 2012). There were many cases involved in this decision to change the death penalty,cases like U.S. v. Jackson, Witherspoon v. Illnois, Crampton v. Ohio, and McGautha v. California. -
Landmark Cases
In the landmark cases Furman v. Georgia, Jackson v. Georgia, and Branch v. Texas, the uncertainty of the death penalty was brought before the Supreme Court. "With the Furman decision the Supreme Court set the standard that a punishment would be "cruel and unusual" if it was too severe for the crime, if it was arbitrary, if it offended society's sense of justice, or if it was not more effective than a less severe penalty" (Introduction to the Death Penalty, 2012). -
The Wrongfully Accused
Northwestern University held the first-ever National conference on Wrongful Convictions and the Death Penalty in 1973. "The conference, which drew nationwide attention, brought together 30 of these wrongfully convicted inmates who were exonerated and released from death row" (Introduction to the Death Penalty, 2012). -
Limitations to the Death Penalty
In 1977, the death penalty was considered unconstitutional punishment for the rape of an adult woman when the victim was not killed. -
Limitations to the Death Penalty
In 1986, The Supreme Court banned the execution of insane people and required an adversarail process for determining mental competency in Ford v. Wainwright. The court decided in Penry v. Lynaugh, that the execution of person with "mental retardation" was not a violation of the Eighth Amendment. -
Juveniles
n 1988, four justices said that the execution of offenders aged fifteen and younger at the time of their crimes was unconstitutional in Thompson v. Oklahoma. "The combined effect of the opinions by the four Justices and Justice O' Connor in Thompson is that no state without a minimun age in its death penalty statute can execute someone who was under sixteen at the time of the crime" (Introduction to the Death Penalty, 2012). -
Herrera v. Collins
In the case Herrera v. Collins, the Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of executing someone who claimed that they were actually innocent. "The court held that, in the absence of other constitutional violations, new evidence of innocence is no reason for federal courts to order a new trial" (Introduction to the Death Penalty, 2012). The court also stated that the innocent inmate could always seek to prevent his execution through the clemency process. -
Violent Crime and Law Enforcement Act
President Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act that expanded the federal death penalty to 60 different crimes, three of those crimes did not involve murder. THe exeptions were espionage, treason, and drug traffickig in large amounts. -
Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996
President Clinton signed the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. "The act, which affects both state and federal prisoners, restricts in federal courts by establishing tighter filling deadlines, limiting the opportunity for evidentiary hearings, and ordinarily allowing only a single habeas corpus filling in federal court" (Introduction to the Death Penalty, 2012). It was argued that the streamlining will speed up the death penalty and reduce its costs. -
Blue-ribbion Commission
Illinois had released 13 innocent inmates from death row in the same time that it had executed 12 people. After this, Illinois Governor George Ryan declared a moratorium on executions and appointed a blue-ribbon Commission on Capital Punishment to study the issue.
