Capital Punishment
Capital Punishment is the legal infliction of the death penalty. In the United States, capital punishment is legal in thirty-nine of its fifty states (Death). Beginning in 1973, prison populations began to rise at a surprising growth. There were 204,211 inmates in 1973, and by 1977, the number of prisoners had grown to 285,456, which later grew to 315,974 in 1980 (Death). By 1976, it became clear to authority that the death penalty must be reinstated. America's twenty-one year experiment with capital punishment has resulted in a total of 392 executions (Death). Out of this large number, seventy-eight took place in 1996 alone (Death). Of these however, only thirty-four were classified as federal cases in which thirty- two were male and only two were female (Death).
Every year only about 15,000 murderers are charged in their specific case. Out of this only about 300 will become on death row (Death). The death row population is constantly increasing however as its......
Join Now or Login to view the rest of this paper.
Approximate Word Count: 1897
Approximate Pages: 8 (260 words per double-spaced page) |