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In the late 1980s, Senator Alfonse D'Amato, from New York State, sponsored a bill to make certain federal drug crimes eligible for the death penalty as he was frustrated by the lack of a death penalty in his home state. [13] The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 restored the death penalty under federal law for drug offenses and some types of murder. [14]
Harris, 465 U.S. 37 (1984) — A state appellate court, before it affirms a death sentence, is not required to compare the sentence in the case before it with the penalties imposed in similar cases if requested to do so by the prisoner. Whitmore v. Arkansas, 495 U.S. 149 (1990) — Mandatory appellate review is not required in death penalty cases.
James Liebman, a professor of law at Columbia Law School, stated in 1996 that his study found that when habeas corpus petitions in death penalty cases were traced from conviction to completion of the case, there was "a 40 percent success rate in all capital cases from 1978 to 1995". [163]
The Federal Death Penalty Abolition Act is a proposed United States law that would abolish the death penalty for all federal crimes and all military crimes. If enacted, this act would mark the first time since 1988 where no federal crimes carry a sentence of death.
The death penalty has been in long-term decline nationally due to unrelenting legal challenges, governor-imposed moratoriums, and difficulties acquiring the drugs used in lethal injections.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces ruled in 1983 that the military death penalty was unconstitutional, and after new standards intended to rectify the Armed Forces Court of Appeals' objections, the military death penalty was reinstated by an executive order of President Ronald Reagan the following year. [1]
Texas has executed the most inmates of any other state in the nation, and it's not even close. The Lone Star state has put 591 inmates to death since 1982, most recently Garcia Glen White on Oct. 1.
Most jurisdictions in the United States of America maintain the felony murder rule. [1] In essence, the felony murder rule states that when an offender kills (regardless of intent to kill) in the commission of a dangerous or enumerated crime (called a felony in some jurisdictions), the offender, and also the offender's accomplices or co-conspirators, may be found guilty of murder.