8th Amendment Death Penalty

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The U.S. Supreme Court has been going back and forth between whether or not, using the death penalty is allowed. While the eighth amendment has a ban on cruel and unusual punishment, there are ways to go about it with the jury and how the death penalty can be carried out. The death penalty shouldn't be allowed, but instead, use different punishments such as torture for certain crimes. There is a risk of executing innocent people. Since the death penalty is so final, there is nothing you can do if you find out they are innocent. “A study by Columbia University Law School found that two thirds of all capital trials contained serious errors” and “for every 8.3 people executed, we have found one person on death row who never should have been convicted” …show more content…
Hanging is the most traditional method of execution, but even that has its problems. “If the drop is too short, there will be a slow and agonizing death by strangulation. If the drop is too long, the head will be torn off” (The Case Against the Death Penalty). Other methods include the firing squad, electrocution, the gas chamber and finally lethal injection, which is the latest one. Although modern technology improved and they found better ways to deal with the execution, things did go wrong and they could find themselves torturing the people who were only supposed to get the death penalty, which should be quick and easy. Some people could say that if the crime is big enough, they might just want to skip torture and just sentence them to death right away. If they do get sentenced to death right away, they might lose their chance to prove their innocence. Now, even if these people are on death row and are going to be sentenced, there is no harm in the right to a trial. You don't have to rule out them having the death penalty, just make sure that everything is fair and

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Christopher Simmons 8th Amendment

The 8th Amendment states that people cannot go through cruel and unusual punishment, no matter how bad the crime. But, the definition of cruel and unusual punishment is very subjective. On September 9th, 1993, Christopher Simmons decided to kill his classmate Shirley Crook (Dowell 2023). He broke into her house in the middle of the night, kidnapped her, and took her to a bridge to proceed to throw her off and watch her drown. Therefore, he was later arrested and charged with burglary, kidnapping…

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Supreme Court Case: Gregg V. Georgia

In the Supreme Court case Gregg v. Georgia, Gregg was charged with armed robbery and he was also found guilty of murder and was sentenced to death. Gregg said that his death sentence was cruel and unusual and was a violation of his 8th and 14th amendment right. The court decided that the death penalty did not violate the 8th and 14th amendment and was constitutional. The bifurcated trial process is a trial divided into two stages, one stage is when they decide if the offender is guilty and…

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Death Penalty Emmanuel Vargas CJBS 101 Professor Malkov April 08, 2013 Death Penalty Death Penalty is the penalty of death for the commission of a crime. The first case that was recognized in the United States was the case of Captain George Kendall in Jamestown, Virginia in 1608; he was executed for being a spy for Spain. The United States started to use killing methods such as: electric chair, firing squad, hanging, stoning, decapitation, gas chamber but the most common was the…

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In today’s society people snap when criminals receive the death penalty proclaiming that we are violating the 8th amendment, which indicates cruel and unusual punishment, however, in the 18th century under the “Babylonian law, King Hammurabi” (Jean Kellaway), introduced the world to execution. Which, now a days we view this as torture; before the states had hangings, electric chairs, firing squads, gas chambers and lethal injection, human being were gruesomely being tortured in unbelievable ways…

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Death Penalty Death penalty can be applied to anyone that has committed a crime that is severe. U.S government and U.S Military are approving these laws, but what they don’t know is that they are breaking some laws as well. In the United States there are thirty-three states approving the death penalty and seventeen states that have abolish the death penalty. Death penalty doesn’t apply to everyone: government officials have said that criminals have to pay for their crime. Death penalty should not…

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Simmons, Graham v. Florida, and Miller v. Alabama are all cases that helped abolished sentencing juveniles life without parole. The reality is that life without parole means sentencing the youth to die in prison. It is one of the harshest penalties that a person can can receive in the United States. In December of 2006 ,the United Nations held a discussion for abolishing life without parole for children and young teenagers. The vote was 185 to 1 and the United States was the only vote…

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Mcclesky V. Kemp Case Study

The death penalty, also known as Capital Punishment, has been a punishment worldwide for hundreds of years (Stearman, 5). Every country around the world has its own way of executing the death sentence. The United States has moved from hanging people to using the electric chair to the gas chamber and now to the lethal injection (Wolf, 13). The death penalty is unconstitutional because it violates the rights of the people, which are the “Equal Rights Clause” (14th Amendment), Cruel or Unusual Punishment…

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death penalty Essay

The death penalty or capital punishment is used on a wide range of crimes. 58 nations presently use capital punishment. In 1972 capital punishment was ruled unconstitutional in Furman v. Georgia arguing that it violated the 8th and 14th amendments, but in 1976 it was switched in Gregg v. Georgia. The death penalty however isn't legal is 13 states. Some argue that if the threat of the death penalty decreses the number of murders will increase. Crime has continued to increase because there are now…

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