The Supreme Court Review Has Slowed the Number of Executions in the U.S.

The annual number of executions has slowed to the lowest point in a decade because the Supreme Court has decided to review it and decide whether it is too cruel to administer. Many courts have postponed executions until the Supreme Court has made a decision regarding the fate of the lethal injection in America. That is making it a very quiet year for executions. Fewer than fifty executions will take place this year, even if several states pushing ahead with lethal injections defeat legal efforts to stop them. The last time executions numbered fewer than fifty was in 1996, when there were forty-five. Since executions resumed in this country in 1977 after a Supreme Court-ordered halt, 1,099 inmates have died in state and federal execution chambers. The highest annual total was ninety-eight in 1999. That information came from the Death Penalty Information Center, which is against capital punishment. This year alone, forty-two people have been executed. Twenty-six of those prisoners were executed in Texas. Texas has stopped executions for the rest of this year because four executions have already been postponed by the court. Executions also have been delayed in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas and Oklahoma since the court announced Sept. 25 it would hear a challenge to Kentucky's lethal injection method. Courts in California, Delaware, Missouri, North Carolina and Tennessee have previously cited problems with lethal injections procedures in stopping executions. The last person executed in this country was Michael Richard, 49, who died by lethal injection in Texas. That was same day the Supreme Court agreed to consider the constitutionality of lethal injection procedures in Kentucky. Kentucky's method of lethal injection executions is similar to procedures in three dozen other states. The court will consider whether the mix of three drugs used to sedate and kill prisoners has the potential to cause pain severe enough to violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Some supporters of the death sentence have countered what others say by stating that executions should continue while it is under review. State officials in Florida, Georgia and Mississippi are continuing with plans to carry out death sentences despite the high court's review.

The earliest known death penalty can go back to the early eighteenth century in Babylon. In 1608, the first recorded execution in America took place in Jamestown. Captain George Kendall was killed for being a spy for Spain. Each death penalty law differed in each colony. The death penalty has been around for a long time, so it is not that easy to be abolished. The 1960s brought challenges to the fundamental legality of the death penalty. Before then, the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments were interpreted as permitting the death penalty. However, in the early 1960s, it was suggested that the death penalty was a "cruel and unusual" punishment, and therefore unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. In the late 1960s, the Supreme Court began revising the way the death penalty was administered.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Scotus-Executions.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=199