| A Short History of the Death Penalty in the US
The Espy File Much of our historical knowledge of the death penalty in the US comes from a dataset on executions since the 1600s in the colonies and United States originally compiled by Watt Espy and later updated by John Smykla. The dataset contains information on more than 15,000 executions over four centuries. The periods discussed below are based primarily on data from the Espy File. Before the Civil War In the American colonies (1600s and 1700s) and newly-emerging United States (first half of the 1800s), laws and the legal structure (processes, rights, etc.) were very similar to those of England where most of the US legal system originated. But unlike in England, where the huge surplus populations of displaced peasants had led to the Bloody Code and mass executions, the US legal system was much less harsh and executions were relatively rare and sporadic. The primary reason for this was simple � as immigrants from Europe (Europe�s surplus populations) poured into the US in huge numbers, they constantly moved west as the continent was conquered and settled. Thus there was not much of a surplus population �problem� to elicit a brutal response from elites. The main exceptions to the pattern of rare executions were: executions of �witches� in New England in the 1600s; executions of Tories (people loyal to England before, during, and after the American Revolution) in the late 1700s; executions of abolitionists (opponents of slavery) in the border states in the mid-1800s; and occasional executions of slaves in the southern states and immigrants in the northern states. After the Civil War Following the Civil War (1860-65) there were huge increases in both legal and illegal executions (lynchings) across most of the country. In the northern states, industrialization, urbanization, and massive immigration from Europe created our first impoverished urban surplus populations, and these were the targets of both lynching and legal executions by the dominant elites. In the southern states, the failure of "Reconstruction" and emergence of the racist "Jim Crow" system of white domination and segregation transformed the freed slaves into surplus populations and thus targets of both lynching and legal executions by the dominant whites. In the Western states, the conquest of native peoples (Native Americans and Hispanics) along with general immigration from the eastern states and several specific things that brought in many unattached young males led to the targeting of several demographics for execution and lynching: Native Americans, Hispancis, Chinese immigrants (brought in to build the railroads), and �outlaws� most of whom were simply employees caught up in the Ranchers vs. Farmers wars in the west. First half of the 1900s In the first half of the 1900s, there were a number of �modernizing� trends across the country relating to legal systems and processes as the US became more urban and industrialized. First, lynchings declined and were increasingly replaced by legal executions, except in the south where the decline was slower because of the Jim Crow system. There was also a trend away from public executions and legal systems were increasingly �centralized� with legal processes increasingly controlled by the states rather than local jurisdictions (cities, counties, etc.). By the middle of the 1900s, lynchings were coming to an end and the legal DP was becoming primarily a southern phenomenon directed almost entirely against African Americans. Post-WW 2 The worldwide decline of the DP that had started in the mid 1800s in Europe was escalating, especially in Europe, and now spreading to Asia, Africa, South and Central America, etc. �Leadership from the front� was the key factor in this decline - politicians were leading the trend toward modernization rather than simply following "public opinion." The process was simple: politicians acted to stop executions; once executions stopped laws were changed to abolish the DP; once the DP was completely gone for a while, public opinion adjusted to the changed circumstances. Further, as more and more countries have abolished the DP, capital punishment has been increasingly defined under international law and protocols as a violation of human rights, and thus constitutionally banned. After WWII, the US generally followed the European pattern, except in parts of the south where the DP was/is driven primarily by racism). In the 1950s and 1960s there was declining support for the DP among Governors, Attorneys General, state and federal courts, etc. The Civil Rights Movement added its voice by challenging racial discrimination in death sentencing. Finally, the �Moratorium Strategy� developed by a group of civil rights lawyers working with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund sought to stop executions across the country, and then hopefully persuade the Supreme Courts to finalize outright abolition of the DP. The end result of these various processes was the end of executions in the 1960s followed in 1972 by Furman V. Georgia, where the US Supreme Court ruled that the DP was unconstitutional because it was arbitrary, capricious, and �probably� discriminatory. |