a relatively lax policy toward capital punishment, having only eight crimes punishable by death. Similarly, the colonies followed England's lenient laws governing the use of the death penalty. Each colony, however, followed its own laws. For example, Pennsylvania, a state with a population of mostly Quakers was the most lenient, prescribing death for only two crimes. In contrast, Virginia was perhaps the harshest of all the colonies, sentencing death for a total of twelve different crimes (Kronenwetter, 1993). When the United States was established as an independent nation, the Constitution gave both the states and the federal government the right to select punishments for crimes. The death penalty was not excluded as a form of punishment, and was generally accepted by the majority of the population with three notable exceptions. The first of the three movements surfaced during the mid-nineteenth century. This movement was led by some of the same reformers who opposed slavery, however, it faded during the Civil War. The second movement against the death penalty began around the turn of the century and the third movement occurred during the middle of this century. Each of these three movements resulted in the banning or restriction of the death penalty in at least one state. More recently, the constitutionality of the death penalty was questioned in the 1972 case of Furman v. Georgia. In their decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty was "cruel and unusual" punishment, and thus violated the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution (Kronenwetter, 1993). In response, many state legislatures rewrote their laws governing the death penalty, and in 1976, the Supreme Court case Gregg v. Georgia overturned Furman v. Georgia (Kronenwetter, 1993). This, once again, made the death penalty legal, as it remains to this day. Currently, thirty-seven states and the federal government allow the death penalty, with three major and two minor...
