aker 127). Before the 1970s, when the death penalty for rape was still used in many states, no white men were guilty of raping nonwhite women, whereas most black offenders found guilty of raping a white woman were executed. This data shows how the death penalty can discriminate and be used on certain races rather than equally as punishment for severe crimes. And thirdly, poor and friendless defendants who cant afford proper defense get a court-appointed counsel, and are most likely to be sentenced to death and executed. Defenders of the death penalty, however, argue that, because nothing found in the laws of capital punishment causes sexist, racist, or class bias in its use, these kinds of discrimination are not a good enough reason for abolishing the death penalty on the idea that it discriminates or violates the 8th Amendment of the United States Constitution. Opponents of capital punishment have replied to this by saying that the death penalty is impossible to administer fairly. In the 1970s, a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions made the death penalty in the U.S. unconstitutional if it is imposed without providing courts with enough help to make the right decision in the severity of the sentence, or if it is imposed for a crime that does not take or threaten the life of another human being. The death penalty was also confined to crimes of murder, including felony murder. A felony murder is any homicide committed in the course of committing another felony, such as rape or robbery. After the 1972 court ruling that all but a few capital statutes were unconstitutional, thirty-seven states revised and reenacted their death penalty laws. In 1989 the Supreme Court decided that the death penalty could be used on those who were mentally retarded or over the age of 16 at the time of the killing. The Supreme Court is making a cut back on the appeals that death row inmates could make to the federal courts. I feel strongly toward using the de...
