Death Penalty in all 50 States?
We already have the death penalty for federal crimes in all 50 states. In order to enact it for state crimes in the states that currently don't have the death penalty, you would need to have the legislatures of those states pass laws instituting the death penalty or possibly pass a constitutional amendment allowing it.
Why do some states in America have the death penalty and others don't?
Jeffrey Dubiel is spot on. The United States in not one place with total power vested in the central government. It is a union of 50 sovereign states plus the District of Columbia. The tenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution speaks to state autonomy: “ The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Judicial sentencing is reserved to the states and each state decides how it will sentence those convicted of crimes.By the way, the federal government also imposes the death penalty as does the U.S. military. Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, was executed at a federal penitentiary in 2001. Private John Bennett was the last military member to receive capital punishment. In April 1961, Bennett was executed via hanging at Fort Leavenworth. Thirty-one states allow capital punishment in their sentencing guidelines while 19 states and the District of Columbia do not. A 2017 Gallup poll shows that 55% of Americans approve of capital punishment while 41% disapprove.
Why doesn't America make the death penalty illegal in all states?
There are already several good answers that address the constitutional aspect of this issue.I believe the states that still have the death penalty hang onto it because of a Judeo-Christian philosophy of retribution being just, e.g. “an eye for an eye.” If you kill someone maliciously, the only just penalty is for you to forfeit your own life.Personally, I have no problem with the death penalty, provided we know we have the truly guilty party. The problem is that our justice system is anything but 100% reliable, and there have been numerous cases where people have been sentenced to death only to have been exonerated later. We have almost certainly put to death some innocent people, but because states will not re-open cases for investigation once the guilty party is executed, I can’t point you to any sure examples.There is no evidence that the death penalty has a deterrent effect on crime. If it did, murder rates in states with the death penalty would be lower than those without it. This is not the case. It is also far more expensive to execute someone than to keep them in prison for life, because of the automatic appeals process and the ways condemned prisoners are housed differently. For these reasons and others, I think we would be better off without a death penalty.
Why does America still use the death penalty in some states?
The United States of America is a nation made up of 50 states, a Commonwealth, and three territories. Each state entity runs its own criminal justice system and they are each slightly different.Some states through their normal legislative process have decided that the death penalty is not wise public policy and have passed laws abolishing the penalty. Illinois is one of those states.Other states profoundly disagree with this position, holding that “ the punishment should fit the crime” in order to fulfill the demands of justice. They just do not see “three hots and a cot, a roof over his head and free medical and dental care and movies and a free library” for 40 or more years as “ punishment” for the rape and murder of a 7 year old girl and her mother. Welcome to Texas.I guess that’s a start.
Will the US ever abolish the death penalty in all states?
On what timeframe? The USA may have disappeared as a nation before it makes that lurch into the 20th Century (note the century lag).It depends on the American people who generally buy into the mythology of “land of the free” and see themselves as the world’s good guys. Are Americans willing to scrutinise their ethical failure on this issue and compare it with their aspirations, like the actual free world has done already, and fix it. Or are Americans—seemingly comfortable with a leadership that lacks moral compass; that builds walls to keep politically engendered fears at bay and offers to issue guns to teachers to protect school kids from guns—comfortable with that too?Here is your ethical dilemma USA:If one innocent person on death row is put to death, then that person has been murdered by the state.A state that murders its own citizens is not part of the free world. It is part of an axis with Syria, Russia, the Philippines, the banana republics. And as long as the US has been executing prisoners, it has been murdering innocents. There is no way around this fact and no way to solve a margin of error that turns the state into a terrorist organisation, except to remove state murder from the books.Will it? The character of a nation is on trial.
Why is the USA the only Western country with the death penalty?
While the death penalty is technically legal in the majority of states, it rarely occurs, and even when it does, it usually isn’t acted upon.In 2016 and 2017, there were 20 executions in the U.S. for each year. These executions are concentrated among just a handful of states. It’s not so much a national issue as a localized, southern one. So it is a small, isolated problem but is still nonetheless barbaric.Laws are often poor indicators of reality.In the U.S., for example, church and state are legally separated, yet the U.S. is one of the most religious developed countries. In contrast, Norway doesn’t have the separation of church and state, yet it has one of the lowest church attendance records in the world and is one of the least religious.You have to look to deeper to see what’s actually going on. Laws are often passed in response to a problem, and if there’s not much of a problem, then there’s little incentive for people to mobilize themselves to change the law. So you get these vestigial laws that stay on the books.The U.S. is also not the only “western” country that uses the death penalty.
Why does the United States use a soft painless death penalty like "Lethal Injection"?
It is the humane thing to do. I want them eliminated from the society and I don't want to shelter and feed them for the rest of their life. Liberals just don't get it. Death penalty needs to be re-instated in all 50 states. We are running out of prison and fund.