Capital Punishment In The Colonial Era

During the late 1600s in Salem Village, Massachusetts, a strange hysteria took over the town as people began to be accused of witchcraft by a group of young girls. The girls started a paranoia that would eventually cause the execution of 19 “witches.” These witches were accused by the girls using spectral evidence, which are testimonies of dreams and visions. They were executed in public hangings between the years of 1692 and 1693. “The court later deemed the trials unlawful” because the type of evidence lead to the death of innocent people (“Salem Witch Trials,” 2001, para. 1-6). Public hangings are a form of punishment that became the most frequent form of capital punishment by the 10th century (Reggio, n.d., para. 4). The same way the Puritan
community of Salem Village used hangings to punish those who had committed the crime of witchcraft, the United States authorizes capital punishment to punish those who have committed unforgivable crimes. Capital punishment has a long history in the United States, including many attempts to abolish it, changes in the form of execution, as well as a long list of executions.
Capital punishment is "the legally authorized killing of someone as punishment for a crime." The use of capital punishment in the United States was brought by European settlers in the 17th century, and Britain was the country that influenced its use the most.
The death penalty was greatly used for a wide variety of crimes, including “offenses such as striking one's mother or father, or denying the ’true God.’" Later, Thomas Jefferson introduced a bill for capital punishment to be only used for the crimes of murder and treason, but it was defeated by one vote. Abolitionist movements began during colonial times and gained large support to the point where states began to abolish the death penalty completely. “In 1846, Michigan became the first state to abolish the death penalty for all crimes except treason. Later, Rhode Island and Wisconsin abolished the death penalty for all crimes” (“Introduction to the Death Penalty,” n.d., para
4-10).
The 1960s brought questions regarding the legality of the death penalty because it was thought to be “cruel and unusual,” which would make it illegal under the Eighth Amendment. In 1972 in the Furman v Georgia court case, the U.S. Supreme Court abolished the death penalty because it “could result in arbitrary sentencing.” Only four years later in 1976, the Court reinstated the death penalty in the states who rewrote their death penalty statutes to eliminate arbitrariness. Later that year, the Court declared that it was constitutional, making the death penalty legal for the states that desired to reinstate it. It was a decision shaped by 3 different cases that are known as the Gregg decision (“Introduction to the Death Penalty,” n.d. para. 17-27). Because of questions regarding its legality under the Eighth Amendment, some states changed the methods they used for executions as time passed in order for capital punishment to not be “cruel and unusual.”
Today in the United States, capital punishment is authorized by the federal government and military in 31 states ("States and Capital Punishment", 2016, para.
1). The other 19 states have completely abolished the death penalty. Most states who authorize the death penalty punish the crimes of murder or other capital offenses. Few states today authorize the death penalty for individuals who have committed the crime of sexual assault or rape. In these cases, there is a criteria differing from state to state to determine whether it should be applied or not (“Crimes Punishable by Death,” n.d., para. 1). From 1977 until 2014, 1,934 people were executed in the United States. Eighty-one percent of the total executions in the United States were held in the South, and 3 executions were authorized by the federal government: 2 in 2001 and 1 in 2003 (Snell, 2014, table). Since the 1700s, a total of about 15,746 executions have been held in the United States (Wilson, 2014, para.
2).
Many different methods of execution have been used throughout time in the United States, including burning, firing squad, hanging, gas chambers, electrocution, and the lethal injection (Wilson, 2014, graph). More than half of the executions in the United States have been held by hangings (Wilson, 2014, para. 2). Most states with a death penalty today used the lethal injection as the primary form of execution ("States and Capital Punishment", 2016, para. 2). States like Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia allow electrocution as a second option while Delaware, New Hampshire, and Washington allow hanging. Oklahoma and Utah allow firing squad if other methods are found to be unconstitutional (Berman & Barnes, 2014, para. 2).
The death penalty has been a form of punishment in just about any culture and country, including the United States. With a long history and heated debates, capital punishment has found a way to survive in the country as a legal form of punishment today. Although methods have changed through time, the fate of those who receive it is the same for the Salem "witches" in the 1600s and criminals sentenced today: death. From public hangings to the lethal injection, the death penalty in the United States has changed drastically throughout time.