The Death Penalty

In its 1972 decision in Furman v. Georgia 408 U.S. 238 (1972), the Supreme Court had imposed a de facto moratorium on the death penalty. In response, legislatures in many states retooled the procedures used to impose the death penalty to conform to the Furman decision. This July Case, as a leading scholar refers to it, set forth the two main features capital sentencing procedures must employ in order to comport with the Eighth Amendment. The primary defect in American capital sentencing procedures that Furman had identified was the arbitrary and capricious nature of the entire system. Justice Potter Stewart had remarked that the death penalty was "cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual." Huh? In the July 2 Case, the Court set out two broad guidelines that legislatures must follow in order to craft a constitutional capital sentencing scheme. First, the scheme must provide objective criteria to direct and limit the sentencing discretion. The objectiveness of these criteria must in turn be ensured by appellate review of all death sentences. Second, the scheme must allow the sentencer (whether judge or jury) to take into account the character and record of an individual defendant. Then came Gregg v. Georgia U.S. 153 (1976) which reinstated the death penalty. Since that time many tried and true forms of Capital Punishment have fallen by the wayside being deemed cruel and unusual. The electric chair; Old Sparky, hanging, the gas chamber and the firing squad have gone. They have been replaced by a drug cocktail seeping into the arm and the convicted murderer, rapist or serial killer who falls quietly to sleep then dies. What about their victims? Their deaths were not cruel and unusual? How about a death penalty that is administered the same way the convicted person took the life of their victim? The electric chair came to be used as a form of execution in the 1880’s. 2400 volts of electricity insured the death of the condemned. During the use of the chair there were instances that caused it to come under scrutiny as being cruel and unusual. Execution by hanging was a grim, hands-on business in early-20th century America. It took a strong stomach indeed to wrap a noose around the condemned man, then let him drop through a gallows trapdoor to choke and gasp and swing until he died, unless they took into account the nature of the crime committed. No explanation is needed for the firing squad. In 1924, the use of cyanide gas was introduced as Nevada sought a more humane way of executing its inmates. A federal court in California found this method to be cruel and unusual punishment. The last use of a gas chamber was on March 3, 1999. For execution by this method, the condemned person is strapped to a chair in an airtight chamber. Below the chair rests a pail of sulfuric acid. A long stethoscope is typically affixed to the inmate so that a doctor outside the chamber can pronounce death. Once everyone has left the chamber, the room is sealed. The executioner flicks a lever that releases crystals of sodium cyanide into the pail. This causes a chemical reaction that releases hydrogen cyanide gas.
I was probably writing the first of many death penalty papers when David Mark Hill walked into the DFCS office in North Augusta and took the lives of those people. Too bad he missed his head when he tried to kill himself. Too bad someone didn’t help him along then. No one had to wait on DNA or fingerprint analysis from AFIS; everyone knew who was to blame. Here it is 12 years later and if no one stays the execution he will finally get what he deserves. I wonder what those three victims could have accomplished in the 12 years that have since passed.