Probation and Parole

Content:

1. History of capital punishment

1.1. notion of capital punishment
1.2. historical facts
1.3. main methods of death penalty

2. Different points of view concerning capital punishment
2.1. Is death punishment more human than imprisonment?
2.2. Does it help to deter crimes?

3. Two court cases based on capital punishment

4. Execution of innocent people

5. Conclusion

1. In this case the word “capital” means the person’s head, in the past people were executed by taking off their head from their body. The history of capital punishment is rather long, one of the first laws concerning it was met in the eighteenth century B.C. in the Code of King of Hammaurabi of Babylon. There were about 25 crimes, for which the death penalty was used. In the Fourteenth Century B.C.’s Hittite Code you could also meet the death penalty; in the Draconian Code of Athens, by that law death was made the only punishment for all crimes; he ways of fulfillment were different: crucifixion, drowning, burning alive, and impalement. Hanging became a usual method of execution in Britain in the Tenth Century A.D. This rule was broken during the Sixteenth Century, under the reign of Henry VIII, at those times about 72,000 people were executed. Nowadays such things as marrying a Jew or not confessing to a crime would probably not considered to be worth a person’s life, but these were considered to be a rather hard offenses and were punished. The situation was getting even worse when by the 1700s the number of crimes, for that death penalty was applied, was getting bigger and at last grew to 222 crimes, that were to be punished through death, including stealing, cutting down a tree. The result was that the judges didn’t like to consider most of the people guilty for such kind of offenses as the death penalty was a too serious type of punishment. It is logical that the Britain laws concerning death penalty were to be changed and reformed. The reforms of 1823-1837 resulted in elimination of death penalty for about 100 of the 222 crimes, which were earlier punished by death. The use of death penalty in America was under the influence of Britain. The Europeans coming to the new world were bringing the practice of capital punishment with them. The reason for executing Kendall, in the Jamestown colony of Virginia in 1608 was the suspect that he was a spy for Spain. In 1612, Virginia Governor Sir Thomas Dale produced the Divine, Moral and Martial Laws. This set of laws was too severe for some even small wrong deeds like stealing fruits, killing poultry, and trading with natives. The laws concerning the death penalty were different in different colonies. For example The Massachusetts Bay Colony the first execution happened in 1630. The New York Colony was living by the Duke’s Laws of 1665. Here the cases for death punishment were such as beating one’s mother or father, or not agreeing with the “true God,” they were punished by death.
During the colonial times, even more attention was paid to death punishment and such famous people as Montesquieu, Voltaire and Bentham, and English Quakers John Bellers and John Howard were writing about it. In the essay of Cesare Beccaria’s 1767, “On Crimes and Punishment” that was well-known and read all over the world, the author was talking about absence of justification for the state’s taking of a life. The essay was one of the start points of abolitionists and they could talk about the problem openly, as a result the death penalty in Austria and Tuscany was abolished.
The educated people in America were also under the influence of Beccaria. The start of the reforms of the death penalty in the U.S. occurred when Thomas Jefferson produced a bill as a kind of new law concerning the death penalty. The two cases for death penalty were the crimes of murder and treason.
Later on Dr. Benjamin Rush, he was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and he founded the Pennsylvania Prison Society, showed his hesitation about the fact that the death penalty serves as deterrence. On the contrary he supported the theory that having a death penalty only increased criminal cases. He was supported by Benjamin Franklin and Philadelphia Attorney General William Bradford. In 1794, Pennsylvania eliminated the death penalty for the rest of the crimes and only the first degree murder was still punished through death.
In the nineteenth century a great role for the matter of death punishment was played by the abolitionist movement. Many states considered and reduced the number of their capital crimes and presented state penitentiaries. In 1834, Pennsylvania became the first state to stop making executions in front of all public and carried them out at some special places. In 1846, Michigan was the first state that abolished the death penalty for all crimes, but for treason. By the end of the century such countries as Venezuela, Portugal, Netherlands, Costa Rica, Brazil and Ecuador followed the example.
Some states of the USA eliminated the death punishment, but some didn’t. Some states even worsened the situation by applying some special laws towards slaves. In 1838 the tendency to use some special places for execution instead of making it in public developed. The reforms in 1838 in Tennessee, and later in Alabama brought enactment of discretionary death penalty statutes. “This introduction of sentencing discretion in the capital process was perceived as a victory for abolitionists because prior to the enactment of these statutes, all states mandated the death penalty for anyone convicted of a capital crime, regardless of circumstances. With the exception of a small number of rarely committed crimes in a few jurisdictions, all mandatory capital punishment laws had been abolished by 1963.” (Naftali Bendavid, “U.S. study rebuts death penalty bias: Critics: Report on race issue flawed,” Chicago Tribune, 2001-JUN-7 pp.3).
The Civil War played also a positive role for death penalty abolishment, as people were more concentrated on anti – slavery movement. And the end of the century on the contrary were made some new contributions to the death punishment when the electric char emerged. For the first time it was made in New York in 1888 and two years later was used for William Kemmler. As time passed other states also accepted this execution method.
The Twentieth Century is known for the “Progressive Period” of the reforms in the USA. The atmosphere was rather intense as people in the USA were afraid of the influence of the Russian Revolution. Later the USA took part in the World War 1 and the result were the social conflicts between socialists and capitalists. As a result, most abolitionist states re-established their death penalty by 1920.
Between years 1920s and 1940s this issue was again discussed as criminologists were proving that the death penalty was a kind of necessary social measure. Americans at those times were suffering because of Prohibition and the Great Depression. There were a great number of executions in the 1930s, about 167 per year.
Later, under the influence of other nations, the number of death punishment cases decreased, according to the statistics: “Whereas there were 1,289 executions in the 1940s, there were 715 in the 1950s, and the number fell even further, to only 191, from 1960 to 1976. In 1966, support for capital punishment reached an all-time low. A Gallup poll showed support for the death penalty at only 42%” (“U.S. execution of mentally retarded condemned. State legislatures urged to act,” Human Rights Watch, 2001-MAR-20 pp.1-2).
Before finishing the historical overview of death penalty, we would like to mention the main methods of execution that were created within all the years of the usage of this way of punishment:
- Hanging: this method is considered humane as the neck is broken usually very quickly, but if the distance is too great, the rope will tear his head off.
- Electric chair: it is hard to say what experiences a person being executed this way. The two cases are known, where prisoners lived for 4 to 10 minutes before finally being dead.
- Firing squad: Death comes quickly, if the killers don’t miss. In the U.S., this method was used only Utah. Later it was changed for lethal injection as a more humane method.
- Poison gas: Cyanide is dropped into acid and then they get the Hydrogen Cyanide, a gas, which actually kills a human being. A person experiences several minutes of agony and then dies.
- Lethal injection: the prisoner is strapped to the table in a special room and lethal drugs are injected into him. If properly conducted, the prisoner quickly becomes unconscious. This method is becoming more and more popular.
- Guillotine: A famous French invention was never used in North America. After the neck is severed a person dies very quickly.
- Stoning: The prisoner is often buried up to his neck and executed with stones. Not used in North America, but some Muslim countries are known for applying it as a penalty for murder, adultery and other crimes.
2. The problem of death penalty is certainly vital not only for government or juridical system, this an important social issue, and there are certainly a lot of presentations of it from different sides and points of view of all people. In this paper the most common points of view will be considered and described. There are certainly a lot of arguments for and against death penalty, both are going to be mentioned here.
The first thesis to discuss in this relation will be - whether death is more human than life imprisonment. People supporting this point of view, state that the Eighth Amendment, prohibiting cruel punishment, was wrong. They state that murder for example is the same cruel, inhumane and degrading and not less than punishment. Moreover they think that making a person suffer in a jail for the rest of his life is even crueler than releasing him rather quickly through this type of execution. Besides imprisonment can not be a sufficient guarantee that the murderer in the past would not find the way to return to society, either having escaped or having been released on parole and that he would not start doing the same he already did. But on the other hand the statistic researches made in the countries like Sweden, Netherlands, Denmark, Switzerland, and Belgium, where death executions were not carried out for a long period of time already, showed that there was no increase in the number of murders after that. It is not easy to provide the statistical facts concerning deterrent value, as it is not possible to say for sure who was going to commit a crime and was deterred from doing it. Some modern supporters of death penalty state that this type of execution should not deter crimes, it should simply serve as a method of punishment for serious crime.
3. In this part of the paper we are going to mention two cases connected with death penalty.
The case of Roy Roberts, executed in Missouri, 1999:
“Roy “Hog” Roberts was probably falsely convicted of murdering Tom Jackson, a guard, during a prison riot. Shortly before his execution in 1999 at the Potosi Correctional Center, he successfully asked for a polygraph test. The test indicated that Roberts was telling the truth when he said that he did not hold down the guard for other inmates to stab. When Robert’s attorney, Bruce Livingston, told his client the test results, tears rolled down Roberts’ cheeks. He asked “When do I get out of here.” The fact was that the polygraph test could not prove that Roberts was not telling a lie. They are not precise. There is approximately one chance in seven that the test was not correct. (Anne Gearan, “Executing retarded is barred,” Associated Press, 2002-JUN-21. pp.4-5). Polygraph tests are generally inadmissible in courts. However, Livingston and Roberts wanted with the help of this data to persuade the governor to commute the death sentence. It did not happen so. Roberts was executed a few days later. His final words were: “You’re killing an innocent man and you can all kiss my...”
The case of Larry Griffin, also executed in Missouri, 1995:
Larry Griffin was convicted in a case involving a drive-by killing of Quintin Moss, a 19-year-old drug dealer. The only witness testifying at Griffin’s trial was Robert Fitzgerald, a criminal from Boston MA who was in St. Louis as part of the Federal Witness Protection Program.
Sam Gross, a University of Michigan Law School professor studied the case. He wrote that Fitzgerald had: “...developed a reputation as a snitch that couldn’t produce convictions because Boston juries wouldn’t believe him.” (Anne Gearan, “Executing retarded is barred,” Associated Press, 2002-JUN-21.pp.5-6)
The first police officer who arrived at the murder scene now says that Fitzgerald’s story is false. Fitzgerald was not present at the shooting this was the statement of the second shooting victim later. Prosecutor Jennifer Joyce has reopened the case. She said: “I don’t think there is a single prosecutor who wouldn’t take a second look at it. Hopefully [the investigation] will help protect the integrity of the system.”
Griffin was executed in 1995.” (Anne Gearan, “Executing retarded is barred,” Associated Press, 2002-JUN-21.pp.5-6)
4. Some people are against death penalty as they consider the chance of the wrong convicted person to be executed. There were certainly some safeguards worked out in order to avoid such terribly mistakes, like for example:
1. Only crimes, named in the laws are to be punished by death.
2. Persons below eighteen years of an age, pregnant women, new mothers or persons who have become insane can not be executed by this method.
3. Capital punishment may be imposed only when guilt is supported by clear and convincing evidence leaving no hesitation about an alternative explanation of the facts.
4. Capital punishment may be carried out only after a final judgment rendered by a competent court, when all the possible safeguards were taken into consideration and applied to this very case, including adequate legal assistance.
5. A person who is to execution after the court decision is able to turn to a court of higher jurisdiction.
6. Also capital punishment should be carried out with minimum possible suffering.
All these safeguards are to ensure that death penalty is applied to the correct person and in the correct situation, as we can not treat all the murders identically, for example when there was a plan to kill, somebody, when there was another person, not killer himself who wanted somebody to be dead and when a person was trying to defend himself or his family and killed somebody and so on.
So, it is clear that there are a lot of opinions concerning death penalty among people, most of them have some racial basis and good arguments, and thus it is not possible to treat this issue only from one side.
5. The problem of bringing the innocent people to Death Row is the most sophisticated and delicate. As the two above presented examples prove there are really few chances for the convicted person to be released, some unusual situations do take place, there was one famous case when a person was supposed to be executed as all the evidences were against him, but suddenly the real murderer was caught as he killed another person and the case was reconsidered and the man was able to avoid death penalty, but this was a rare case and even after he was set free he could not go on living as he did before, it certainly influenced him and his attitude to the society.
Overall, the problem of death penalty is rather old and controversial, it is hard to judge it only from one point of view, there are a lot of arguments for and against, there are a lot of different points of view and a lot of details and specifications.

Sources:
1. Naftali Bendavid, “U.S. study rebuts death penalty bias: Critics: Report on race issue flawed,” Chicago Tribune, 2001-JUN-7 (pp.2-8).
2. “U.S. execution of mentally retarded condemned. State legislatures urged to act,” Human Rights Watch, 2001-MAR-20 (pp.1-2)
3. Anne Gearan, “Executing retarded is barred,” Associated Press, 2002-JUN-21. (pp.2-9)
4. Ramsey Clark, “The tragedy of war as an end in itself,” The Toronto Star, 2003-MAR-8 (pp.5-8)

Presentation:
The history of capital punishment is rather long, one of the first laws concerning it was met in the eighteenth century B.C. in the Code of King of Hammaurabi of Babylon. There were about 25 crimes, for which the death penalty was used. In the Fourteenth Century B.C.’s Hittite Code you could also meet the death penalty; in the Draconian Code of Athens, by that law death was made the only punishment for all crimes; he ways of fulfillment were different: crucifixion, drowning, burning alive, and impalement. Hanging became a usual method of execution in Britain in the Tenth Century A.D. But this rule was broken during the Sixteenth Century, under the reign of Henry VIII, at those times about 72,000 people were executed. Nowadays such things as marrying a Jew or not confessing to a crime would probably not considered to be worth a person’s life, but these were considered to be a rather hard offenses and were punished this way. The situation was getting even worse when by the 1700s the number of crimes for that death penalty was applied was getting bigger and at last grew to 222 crimes, that were to be punished through death, including stealing, cutting down a tree.
In 1612, Virginia Governor Sir Thomas Dale produced the Divine, Moral and Martial Laws. This set of laws was too severe for some even small wrong deeds like stealing fruits, killing poultry, and trading with natives. The laws concerning the death penalty were different in different colonies. For example The Massachusetts Bay Colony the first execution happened in 1630. The New York Colony was living by the Duke’s Laws of 1665. Here the cases for death punishment were such as beating one’s mother or father, or not agreeing with the “true God,” they were punished by death.
Later on Dr. Benjamin Rush, he was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and he founded the Pennsylvania Prison Society, showed his hesitation about the fact that the death penalty serves as deterrence. On the contrary he supported the theory that having a death penalty only increased criminal cases. He was supported by Benjamin Franklin and Philadelphia Attorney General William Bradford. In 1794, Pennsylvania eliminated the death penalty for the rest of the crimes and only the first degree murder was still punished through death.
The Civil War played also a positive role for death penalty abolishment, as people were more concentrated on anti – slavery movement. And the end of the century on the contrary were made some new contributions to the death punishment when the electric char emerged. For the first time it was made in New York in 1888 and two years later was used for William Kemmler. As time passed other states also accepted this execution method.
The Twentieth Century is known for the “Progressive Period” of the reforms in the USA. The atmosphere was rather intense as people in the USA were afraid of the influence of the Russian Revolution. Later the USA took part in the World War 1 and the result were the social conflicts between socialists and capitalists. As a result, most abolitionist states re-established their death penalty by 1920.
The main methods of execution that were created within all the years of the usage of this way of punishment:
- Hanging
- Electric chair
- Firing squad
- Poison gas
- Lethal injection
This method is becoming more and more popular.
- Guillotine
- Stoning
The case of Roy Roberts, executed in Missouri, 1999:
“Roy “Hog” Roberts was probably falsely convicted of murdering Tom Jackson, a guard, during a prison riot. Shortly before his execution in 1999 at the Potosi Correctional Center, he successfully asked for a polygraph test. The test indicated that Roberts was telling the truth when he said that he did not hold down the guard for other inmates to stab. When Robert’s attorney, Bruce Livingston, told his client the test results, tears rolled down Roberts’ cheeks. He asked “When do I get out of here.” The fact was that the polygraph test could not prove that Roberts was not telling a lie. They are not precise. There is approximately one chance in seven that the test was not correct. Polygraph tests are generally inadmissible in courts. However, Livingston and Roberts wanted with the help of this data to persuade the governor to commute the death sentence. It did not happen so. Roberts was executed a few days later. His final words were: “You’re killing an innocent man and you can all kiss my...”
The case of Larry Griffin, also executed in Missouri, 1995:
Larry Griffin was convicted in a case involving a drive-by killing of Quintin Moss, a 19-year-old drug dealer. The only witness testifying at Griffin’s trial was Robert Fitzgerald, a criminal from Boston MA who was in St. Louis as part of the Federal Witness Protection Program.
Sam Gross, a University of Michigan Law School professor studied the case. He wrote that Fitzgerald had: “...developed a reputation as a snitch that couldn’t produce convictions because Boston juries wouldn’t believe him.”
The first police officer who arrived at the murder scene now says that Fitzgerald’s story is false. Fitzgerald was not present at the shooting this was the statement of the second shooting victim later. Prosecutor Jennifer Joyce has reopened the case. She said: “I don’t think there is a single prosecutor who wouldn’t take a second look at it. Hopefully [the investigation] will help protect the integrity of the system.”
- Griffin was executed in 1995.”
The problem of bringing the innocent people to Death Row is the most sophisticated and delicate. As the two above presented examples prove there are really few chances for the convicted person to be released, some unusual situations do take place, there was one famous case when a person was supposed to be executed as all the evidences were against him, but suddenly the real murderer was caught as he killed another person and the case was reconsidered and the man was able to avoid death penalty, but this was a rare case and even after he was set free he could not go on living as he did before, it certainly influenced him and his attitude to the society.
Overall, the problem of death penalty is rather old and controversial, it is hard to judge it only from one point of view, there are a lot of arguments for and against, there are a lot of different points of view and a lot of details and specifications.