.png)
On Thursday October 13, 2022, in a court room filled with mourning relatives of the 17 victims of the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, a Florida jury decided to spare the life of the convicted assailant, Nikolas Cruz. Cruz was found guilty of 17 counts of 1st degree murder and 17 counts of attempted murder. The massacre was a brutal event beginning with Cruz taking an Uber to the school on Valentine’s Day in 2018, bringing an illegally obtained AR-15 into the building disguised in a bag, and unleashing countless rounds of ammunition onto the occupants of the school. The sentence came over four years after the attack and sent shockwaves to the families of the horrifying attack.
This situation raises the question: Is the death penalty dead? The jury’s decision not to impose the most severe punishment possible for one of the most extreme crimes committable, quite possibly introduced a new era in punishment in the United States. To rationalize the sentence, this article will review history, Supreme Court precedent, and public opinion data on the matter.
The death penalty has been a form of punishment in America since 1608 when Captain George Kendall was executed by firing squad for carrying out a mutiny. In 1767, Cesare Beccaria’s essay, “On Crimes and Punishment”, theorizes that there in not justification for the state to take a life. This essay sparks the early workings of a death penalty abolishment movement in the U.S. By the early 1800s many states had reduced their number of capital crimes and built state penitentiaries to hold prisoners. In 1847 Michigan became the first state to abolish the death penalty for every crime, except treason. By the 1930s executions had reached their highest levels in American history with an average of 167 performed per year. In the 1990s President Clinton signed laws expanding the use and reducing the judicial review of the death penalty. On the contrary by the early to mid-2000s multiple states had abolished the death penalty.
Deliberation, at the United States Supreme Court, on the death penalty has gone on for many years, but for the purpose of this article, only cases after 1972 and those focused on homicide offenses will be reviewed. In the 1972 session of the Supreme Court a per curium decision in Furman v. Georgia stated that the death penalty constituted cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the 8th and 14th amendments to the constitution- the case involved a man who in the act of a bargirl fired a weapon killing the dweller of a private home. Only for the death penalty to be reinstated in 1976 in Gregg v. Georgia- where the court stated that the death penalty was not unconstitutional and could serve the penological purposes of retribution and deterrence. In 1997 the majority opinion of Coker v. Georgia stated that death penalty must be proportionate to the crime. A 2002 case, Ring v. Arizona established that it was unconstitutional for a judge- without a jury- to impose death. The plurality opinion in an older case, Sumner v. Shuman (1987), that has been quoted in various recent cases, states that “the death penalty is reserved only for the most culpable defendants committing the most serious offenses.”
Turning to public opinion data gives us a more holistic view of the issue. According to a Pew Research study, “Six-in-ten U.S. adults strongly or somewhat favor the death penalty for convicted murderers, [a] majority of Americans have concerns about the fairness of the death penalty and whether it serves as a deterrent against serious, [a] majority of states have the death penalty, but far fewer use it regularly, death sentences have steadily decreased in recent decades, [and] the average time between sentencing and execution in the U.S. has increased sharply since the 1980s” Two key things to look at in this data is the fact that the majority of Americans favor the death penalty, but also have concerns about the fairness of it; and the fact that while most states have the death penalty they do not use it.
Analysis:
Overall, there are many arguments as to whether the death penalty should continue to exist in the United States. However, answering those arguments is not the purpose of this article. History shows us that over time society will wax and wane on certain issues, and at this time the death penalty will not be imposed for “even the most serious offences”. According to Chief Justice Warren, death penalty practices should be adapted according to “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” Currently society might believe that it is wrong to impose the death penalty. Although this may be true it is possible- even likely- that in the future society will favor the death penalty in more circumstances. To answer the question as to “is the death penalty dead” the answer would have to be if a jury is not willing to impose it for the most horrific, heinous crimes, that would constitute a yes- for now.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to serve as an in-depth legal analysis or to scrutinize the actions of the jury in the Parkland school shooting case. It only serves as a general overview of how society views the death penalty.
___________________________
1. The history of the death penalty: A timeline. Death Penalty Information Center 2022. https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/stories/history-of-the-death-penalty-timeline (accessed October 20, 2022).
2. Death penalty. Legal Information Institute. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/death_penalty (accessed October 21, 2022).
3. Gramlich J. 10 facts about the death penalty in the U.S. Pew Research Center 2021. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/07/19/10-facts-about-the-death-penalty-in-the-u-s/ (accessed October 21, 2022).