Читать книгу American Democracy in Context - Joseph A. Pika - Страница 158

Whether to administer the death penalty—and, if so, how—leads to great debate. The Eighth Amendment bans “cruel and unusual punishment.” Does capital punishment violate that ban? If not, where does one draw the line between forms of execution that are constitutional and others that are not?

Some thirty-five years ago, lethal injections were introduced in the United States as a more humane alternative to electrocution, the gas chamber, hanging, and use of a firing squad. In 2008, the Supreme Court considered whether lethal injections cause unnecessary pain, thereby violating the Eighth Amendment. Typically, lethal injections consist of a three-drug cocktail administered intravenously. The first drug, an anesthetic, renders the condemned unconscious; the second drug paralyzes the body; the third drug causes cardiac arrest. Medical personnel do not administer lethal injections because to do so would violate the Hippocratic Oath they have sworn to “do no harm,” and critics charge that the prison employees who typically administer these drugs are often poorly trained. If the first drug is not administered correctly, the inmate can experience excruciating pain that may not be apparent to onlookers because of the paralysis caused by the second drug. By a 7–2 vote, the Court upheld the use of lethal injections.¹²⁵

As of March 2019, 30 states administer the death penalty. More than half the countries in the world have abolished the death penalty in either law or practice. It has been abolished completely in Canada, Australia, Britain, most of Europe, and parts of South America. The United States is one of only five fully developed nations to retain the death penalty (the others are Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan). According to Amnesty International, 20 countries carried out executions in 2018, with the United States having the seventh-highest rate of confirmed executions in the world.¹²⁶ (See Figure 4.4.)

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Figure 4.4 Countries With the Highest Numbers of Executions, 2018

Note: Plus signs indicate that the figure calculated by Amnesty International is a minimum.

Source: “Death Penalty 2018: Dramatic Fall in Global Executions,” Amnesty International, April 10, 2019, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/04/death-penalty-dramatic-fall-in-global-execution/

Since the late 1960s, a majority of Americans have consistently supported the death penalty (see Figure 4.5). Support for the death penalty reached a high of 80 percent in 1994 and declined to 56 percent in 2018.¹²⁷ Only two Supreme Court justices have argued that the death penalty itself constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. However, a majority of the Court did rule in 1972 that random and arbitrary imposition of the death penalty may constitute both cruel and unusual punishment and a violation of due process.¹²⁸ It also ruled in 1977 that the death penalty may be an excessive form of punishment for certain types of crimes (such as rape of an adult).¹²⁹ In 2002, the Court ruled that executing mentally retarded offenders was unconstitutional.¹³⁰ The Court extended that ruling in 2005 to offenders who were under the age of 18 when they committed their crime.¹³¹

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Figure 4.5 The Death Penalty and Public Opinion, 1937–2018

Survey respondents were asked, “Are you in favor of the death penalty for a person convicted ot murder?”

Source: Gallup Poll (http://www.gallup.com/poll/1606/death-penalty.aspx)