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In the United States, capital punishment (also known as the death penalty) is a legal penalty in 27 states (of whom two, Oregon and Wyoming, do not currently hold death row inmates in jail), throughout the country at the federal level, and in American Samoa. [b] [1] It is also a legal penalty for some military offenses.
Death penalty opponents regard the death penalty as inhumane [207] and criticize it for its irreversibility. [208] They argue also that capital punishment lacks deterrent effect, [209] [210] [211] or has a brutalization effect, [212] [213] discriminates against minorities and the poor, and that it encourages a "culture of violence". [214]
The death penalty is sought in only a fraction of murder cases, and it is often doled out capriciously. The National Academy of Sciences concludes that its role as a deterrent is ambiguous.
The Court also found that the death penalty "comports with the basic concept of human dignity at the core of the [Eighth] Amendment". The death penalty serves two principal social purposes—retribution and deterrence. "In part, capital punishment is an expression of society's moral outrage at particularly offensive conduct".
The death row phenomenon is the emotional distress felt by prisoners on death row.Concerns about the ethics of inflicting this distress upon prisoners have led to some legal concerns about the constitutionality of the death penalty in the United States and other countries.
The methodical removal of portions of the body over an extended period of time, usually with a knife, eventually resulting in death. Sometimes known as "death by a thousand cuts". Pendulum. [8] A machine with an axe head for a weight that slices closer to the victim's torso over time (of disputed historicity). Starvation/Dehydration ...
The Death Penalty Information Center adds: “Although sometimes referred to as the ‘gold standard’ of capital punishment … the federal death penalty … is plagued by the same serious ...
The following are the five states with the most executions since the early 1980s, according to the Death Penalty Information Center: Texas, 591. Oklahoma, 126. Virginia, 113. Florida, 106.