The purpose of this research is to examine whether, as a matter of public policy, it is appropriate to maintain the death penalty as a punishment for crimes. The plan of the research will be to set forth a brief history of capital punishment in the United Sates and to discuss the current range of opinion and law on the subject in the US in general and in California. Additionally, the research will present the key features of public-policy debate on the subject, both pro and con, followed by a presentation of personal opinion about the phenomenon.
Capital punishment as a feature of organized civil society is at least as old as history. Biblical sanction, especially in the Old Testament, appears at Gen. 9.6, calling for shedding the blood of a murderer. Other verses call for execution on everything from disobeying priests (Deut. 17.12) to mishandling problem livestock (Exod. 21.29). New Testament sanction is somewhat more ambiguous, though Paul tells the Romans that state authorities have God's authority to punish the wicked (Rom. 13.1-5).
The Enlightenment marked the first major interrogation of capital punishment as state policy in the West. In 1764, Cesare Beccaria argued that punishments should fit the crime and that all citizens, not just elite classes, should be able to at least understand the laws governing them before suffering on account of them (17). Voltaire took up that theme in The Sage and the Atheist, criticizing English law and the Inquisition for disproportionate penalty for offenses against property (Voltaire 332).
In the United States, capital punishment as state policy has found sanction for both proponents and opponents. The Fifth Amendment references capital crimes in passing, which would seem to presume unquestioningly the political validity of the practice. The Eighth Amendment, however, specifically forbids "cruel and unusual punishment," and the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868 largely to protect ...