In 1972, the supreme court of Georgia was faced with an appeal by William Henry Furman, a case that would change the enforcement of and views on the death penalty for a long time to come. Furman was burglarizing a home in Georgia when suddenly he fell. His gun fired and killed the homeowner almost immediately. Shortly after this incident, Furman was sentenced to death by the state of Georgia because the court believed that since he was burglarizing the home at the time of the death, he was to be charged with murder, not manslaughter. Furman appealed this decision and brought it to the supreme court in 1972. Furman believed that this was a direct infraction of the 8th amendment and that it was “Cruel and unusual punishment” to sentence a man…show more content… As far back as eighteenth century B.C., the death penalty was used as a means of punishment in Babylon for 25 different crimes (Infobase). Since 1996; just 22 years ago this year, over 1,420 prisoners have felt the wrath of capital punishment (Infobase). The U.S. is the only Western Democracy remaining that practices the death penalty today. Despite this, the death penalty has not simply just existed and stayed the same since the creation of America. It has been voted on and altered many times since its original implementation. After a four-year moratorium, the death penalty was reinstated in 1988 as a part of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act. The act implemented the death penalty and put it back into use as a part of a plan by the government to intimidate drug dealers by essentially threatening them with capital punishment (Connor). Shortly after this in 1994, the Violent Crime and Law Enforcement act federally instituted the death penalty for a variety of crimes including rape, murder, terrorism, molestation and many more heinous crimes (Connor). The final act passed congressionally in this trifecta of death penalty reinstatement was the Anti-terrorism act of 1996; stating that the death penalty was a requirement in cases involving suspected terrorists (Connor). A common theme that arose in the past instatements of these acts and overall use of the death penalty in the past, is the government using it as a sort of scare tactic to repel certain types of violent crime. This brings up the question of whether or not it is morally acceptable and just to increase the punishment for certain crimes and use an already controversial practice in order to scare away
