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The anti-death penalty movement began to pick up pace in the 1830s and many Americans called for abolition of the death penalty. Anti-death penalty sentiment rose as a result of the Jacksonian era, which condemned gallows and advocated for better treatment of orphans, criminals, poor people, and the mentally ill.
When the French parliament overwhelmingly outlawed the death penalty in 1981, he put his hand on the plaque commemorating Victor Hugo’s seat, also a strident abolitionist, and said “It is done.”
Coker v. Georgia, 433 U.S. 584 (1977) – The death penalty is unconstitutional for rape of an adult woman when the victim is not killed. Enmund v. Florida, 458 U.S. 782 (1982) – The death penalty is unconstitutional for a person who is a minor participant in a felony and does not kill, attempt to kill, or intend to kill. Tison v.
Death penalty opponents regard the death penalty as inhumane [206] and criticize it for its irreversibility. [207] They argue also that capital punishment lacks deterrent effect, [208] [209] [210] or has a brutalization effect, [211] [212] discriminates against minorities and the poor, and that it encourages a "culture of violence". [213]
Since the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in 1976 that allowed the death penalty's return, its justices have wrestled with arguments over who could be executed and how the life-and death-decisions ...
After adjusting for inflation, the court costs of pursuing death penalty convictions, along with the accompanying appeals that are required by law and can take as long as 40 years to play out ...
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 huge costs associated with the death penalty are a very good argument for doing away with it -- as though the possibility of executing an innocent person weren't good enough on its own.