during the colonial period, and was a continuation of an English tradition. Albeit there was little uniformity in American capital statutes because each colony developed its own laws. The only consistency was that murder and rape were capital offenses in all colonies. Since the colonists were heavily influenced by the church, many of the capital crimes were religious offenses: "The capital crimes of the colony at Massachusetts Bay, for example, included idolatry, witchcraft, blasphemy, bestiality, adultery, man stealing, and related sexual transgressions" (Paternoster, 1991, p. 5). After the American Revolution, the number and types of capital offenses were reduced, and many of the religious crimes were eliminated. Nevertheless, sexual crimes, burglary, arson, and treason continued to be deemed worthy of the death penalty. The slave states added additional crimes to their list of capital offenses, e.g., slave revolt, slave stealing, and concealing runaway slaves. After the Civil War, capital offenses were reduced to such a degree that they included only rape and murder. In 1977, the Supreme Court ruled that imposition of the death penalty for rape was unconstitutional because it was disproportionate to the seriousness of the crime.
The prevalent pattern in the Western industrial world is the complete abolition of capital punishment. Most Western nations had long ago abolished the death penalty except for specific offenses resulting from World War II. Belgium is the only Western democracy that has retained the death penalty, but it has not held a civil execution since 1918. Despite the opposition of major humanitarian organizations like the United Nations and Amnesty International, the United States stands alone in the West in its insistence on capital punishment: "However, and whenever, the death penalty is abolished in the United States, that step will be taken with limited public support and will be contrary to the ma...