Since I’m Canadian, I’m not 100% sure of the states’ law. I hear from my american friends that killing one person won’t mean death penalty. Proof that the victim was tortured MAY earn death penalty. Serial killing definately is death penalty, but are all these correct? Inform me if my friends have something mixed up.
First of all, murder is a state (little state, not nation state) rather than a federal crime in the US (for the most part - I’ll mention some exceptions later). So it depends on what state the crime occurs in.
Some states don’t have the death penalty - Wisconsin and Michigan come to mind. So even though Jeffrey Dahmer kidnapped, fornicated with, performed home brain surgery on, fornicated with, killed, fornicated with, and ate about 29 people he was not, in fact, ever eligible for the death penalty because all that happened in Wisconsin (there was considerable time and effort spent in hopes of proving a crime had been comittedd in neighboring Illinois where he WOULD have faced the death penalty)
Usually, killing a police office, torture, multiple killings, killing of children, in some jurisdictions kidnapping of children (with or without killing), and so forth make you “eligible”. A jury decides whether you are guilty enough to actually be killed.
Having a bad lawyer or being poor is also a risk factor.
Aside from treason, for most of US history there hasn’t been much you could do to violate federal law and recieve capital punishment. Over the past few decades, though, killing of federal officers like Drug Enforcement Agents have been made capital offenses on the federal level, as has terrorist incidents like Oklahoma City and, of course hijacking airliners and using them kill thousands of people.
I’m in the process of looking this up, but I wanted to get my two-cents in right away.
The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that the death penalty can only be given out by juries. Here in Colorado, death rulings have been given out by judges, so there is some confusion about what to do with the people that are on death row here.
Having juries decide about whether or not a person deserves the death penalty can get sticky. Things such as race, gender, sexuality and how much you can spend on a lawyer can effect whether or not a defendant gets the death penalty. A case of right white guy gets manslaughter while a poor Hispanic guy gets lethal injection.
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It wasn’t the act of terrorism that got McVeigh a federal capital charge, but that several of his victims were federal officials who were killed in the line of duty. The feds didn’t charge him with anything in connexion with the majority of the victims. I don’t think terrorism per se is a federal capital offence.
[/nitpick]
IIRC, in California, there have to be “special circumstances”, like multiple murders, murder during an armed robbery, getting in a firefight with police.
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=10&did=144
That site contains what you can do to get it in which states. And 12 states do not have the death penalty at all, including: Alaska,Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Minnesota, West Virginia, Vermont, Iowa, Hawaii, Michigan, and D.C.
Terrorism can be a federal capital offense when death results. See 18 U.S.C. 2332 (Terrorism - Criminal Penalties), 18 U.S.C. 2332a (Use of certain weapons of mass destruction), or 18 U.S.C. 2332b (Acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries).
Yes, some terrorist acts will be caught by these provisions, but my point is that there has to be some federal connection to make it a federal crime: murder/manslaughter of US nationals outside the US (s. 2332); use of WMD against US nationals outside US or within the US in a way that will interfere with interstate commerce (s. 2332a); terrorist acts transcending national boundaries (s. 2332b). Just as murder is a state crime only, unless there is a federal issue, so too for terroist acts.
I believe in most of the states with the death penalty, you would need to be convicted of 1st Degree Murder to possible be sentenced to die.
The last statistic I’ve seen on the subject is that a criminal sentenced to die in the U.S. will live an average of 14 years after committing the crime before the sentence is carried out. (Sorry, no cite. I’m lazy.)
Given that, IMHO, there is NO death penalty in the U.S.
Some information about Texas’s death row (which is most active death penalty state by far): official Texas gov’t statistics.
Some publications on the abysmal state of Texas’s capital punishment system, from Texas Defender Service: here.
live in texas. They execute pretty much everyone down there. it all depends though. Some states, counties, cities, prosecutors, judges are different and one may push for death while another will not.
Murder, usually either aggravated or serial, seems to be the only unifying thread between most/all death penalty convictions. Treason is still punishable by death, but i doubt that anyone would get the death penalty for it.
an individual who commits a single act of murder may get the death penalty in a certan texas county while he would only get 30 years in Utah, for example.
My question is what crimes cannot be punished by the death penalty?
There was a man named Carly Chessman in California who was convicted of rape in the 1950-60s and sentenced to death. I believe that since the Supreme Court sanctioned the death penalty, one cannot be sentenced to death for rape.
CAPITAL Murder is a crime that people get sentenced to death for. Simply Capital murder is murder in commission of another felony. For example robbing a liquor store and killing the clerk. If you go home and shoot your wife for serving you cold food, this is not a capiatl offense because you committed no other offense. I would like to ask though n that scenerio, if the person who whacked his wife a felon, can he get the death penalty because he is a felon in possesssion of a handgun?
Also, if you and another guy rob a place, and the other guy kills someone in commission of that robbery, you are also responsible for that person’s death. So one can get the death penalty and have killed no one.
Death penalty should be given to rapists (especially child rapists, kidnappers, and armed robbers). This is of course, one man’s opinion.
SP