Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence ordering that an offender be punished in such a manner is known as a death sentence, and the act of carrying out the sentence is known as an execution. A prisoner who has been sentenced to death and awaits execution is condemned and is commonly referred to as being "on death row". Etymologically, the term capital refers to execution by beheading, but executions are carried out by many methods, including hanging, shooting, lethal injection, stoning, electrocution, and gassing.
The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects against imposing excessive bail, excessive fines, or cruel and unusual punishments. This amendment was adopted on December 15, 1791, along with the rest of the United States Bill of Rights. The amendment serves as a limitation upon the state or federal government to impose unduly harsh penalties on criminal defendants before and after a conviction. This limitation applies equally to the price for obtaining pretrial release and the punishment for crime after conviction. The phrases in this amendment originated in the English Bill of Rights of 1689.
Cesare Bonesana di Beccaria, Marquis of Gualdrasco and Villareggio, was an Italian criminologist, jurist, philosopher, economist, and politician who is widely considered one of the greatest thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment. He is well remembered for his treatise On Crimes and Punishments (1764), which condemned torture and the death penalty, and was a founding work in the field of penology and the classical school of criminology. Beccaria is considered the father of modern criminal law and the father of criminal justice.
In the United States, capital punishment is a legal penalty throughout the country at the federal level, in 27 states, and in American Samoa. It is also a legal penalty for some military offenses. Capital punishment has been abolished in 23 states and in the federal capital, Washington, D.C. It is usually applied for only the most serious crimes, such as aggravated murder. Although it is a legal penalty in 27 states, 20 of them have authority to execute death sentences, with the other 7, as well as the federal government and military, subject to moratoriums.
The right to life is the belief that a human or other animal has the right to live and, in particular, should not be killed by another entity. The concept of a right to life arises in debates on issues including capital punishment, with some people seeing it as immoral; abortion, with some considering the killing of a human fetus immoral; euthanasia, in which the decision to end one's life outside of natural means is seen as incorrect; meat production and consumption, in which the breeding and killing of animals for their meat is seen by some people as an infringement on their rights; and in killings by law enforcement, which is seen by some as an infringement of a person's right to live. Various individuals may disagree in which of these areas the principle of a right to life might apply.
Amy Jean Klobuchar is an American politician and lawyer serving as the senior United States senator from Minnesota, a seat she has held since 2007. A member of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL), Minnesota's affiliate of the Democratic Party, she previously served as the county attorney of Hennepin County, Minnesota.
Capital punishment in France is banned by Article 66-1 of the Constitution of the French Republic, voted as a constitutional amendment by the Congress of the French Parliament on 19 February 2007 and simply stating "No one can be sentenced to the death penalty". The death penalty was already declared illegal on 9 October 1981 when President François Mitterrand signed a law prohibiting the judicial system from using it and commuting the sentences of the seven people on death row to life imprisonment. The last execution took place by guillotine, being the main legal method since the French Revolution; Hamida Djandoubi, a Tunisian citizen convicted of torture and murder on French soil, was put to death in September 1977 in Marseille.
Hill v. McDonough, 547 U.S. 573 (2006), was a United States Supreme Court case challenging the use of lethal injection as a form of execution in the state of Florida. The Court ruled unanimously that a challenge to the method of execution as violating the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution properly raised a claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which provides a cause of action for civil rights violations, rather than under the habeas corpus provisions. Accordingly, that the prisoner had previously sought habeas relief could not bar the present challenge.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in Pakistan. Although there have been numerous amendments to the Constitution, there is yet to be a provision prohibiting the death penalty as a punitive remedy.
Ann Bilansky was an American housewife convicted in 1859 of poisoning her husband with arsenic. She is the only woman in Minnesota to receive the death penalty and the first white person in the state to be executed by hanging.
William Williams was a Cornish miner and the last person executed by the state of Minnesota in the United States. Williams was convicted for the 1905 murders of 16-year old John Keller and his mother, Mary Keller in Saint Paul, and his subsequent botched execution led to increased support for the abolition of capital punishment in Minnesota in 1911.
Capital punishment was outlawed in the State of New York after the New York Court of Appeals declared it was not allowed under the state's constitution in 2004. However certain crimes occurring in the state that fall under the jurisdiction of the federal government are subject to the federal death penalty.
C. Peter Erlinder is an American lawyer, originally from Chicago, who lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was Lead Defense Counsel for the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and has represented several clients internationally, most notably several Rwandan opposition leaders, including Rwandan presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in Nigeria.
Capital punishment as a criminal punishment for homosexuality has been implemented by a number of countries in their history. It is a legal punishment in several countries and regions, all of which have sharia-based criminal laws, except for Uganda.
The 2018 United States Senate election in Minnesota took place on November 6, 2018, to elect a United States Senator from Minnesota. Incumbent Democratic–Farmer–Labor U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar was reelected in a landslide, defeating Republican state House of Representatives member Jim Newberger. This election was held alongside a special election for Minnesota's other Senate seat, which was held by Al Franken until he resigned in January 2018. U.S. House elections, a gubernatorial election, State House elections, and other elections were also held.
Michael L. Radelet, is a sociologist at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is a professor and chairs the Department of Sociology at the university. In his research, Radelet focuses on his interests in criminology, deviance, capital punishment, societal reaction to crime, racial disparities in death sentencing and crime victims. Radelet has taught courses covering introductory sociology, criminology for both undergraduate and graduate levels, capital punishment for both undergraduate and graduate levels, sociology of mental health and illness for both undergraduate and graduate levels, graduate seminar on health professions, social and ethical issues in medical practice, human development, statistics, and social problems. He is the author of the book Facing the Death Penalty that was published in 1989, in which he describes the realities of capital punishment to those condemned.
Amy Jean Klobuchar is an American lawyer and politician serving as the senior United States senator from Minnesota. A member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, Minnesota's affiliate of the Democratic Party, she previously served as the Hennepin County Attorney. She ran for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2020 election, before pulling out in March and endorsing Joe Biden.
The following is a timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States during 2020.
