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Capital punishment is the lawful infliction of death as a punishment and since ancient times it has

been used for a wide variety of offences. The Bible prescribes death for murder and many other
crimes including kidnapping and witchcraft. By 1500 in England, only major felonies carried the
death penalty - treason, murder, larceny, burglary, rape, and arson.

By 1800, however, Parliament has enacted many new capital offenses, and hundreds of persons
were being sentenced to death each year. In the United States prior to the Civil War, the death
penalty was imposed on slaves for many crimes punished less severely when committed by others.

Reform of the death penalty began in Europe by the 1750s and was championed by academics
such as the Italian jurist, Cesare Beccaria, the French philosopher, Voltaire, and the English law
reformer, Jeremy Bentham. They argued that the death penalty was needlessly cruel, overrated as
a deterrent and occasionally imposed in fatal error. Along with Quaker leaders and other social
reformers, they defended life imprisonment as a more rational alternative.

By the 1850s, these reform efforts began to bear fruit. In the United States the death penalty for
murder was first abolished in Michigan (1847); Venezuela (1853) and Portugal (1867) were the first
nations to abolish it altogether. Today, it is virtually abolished in all of Western Europe and most of
Latin America. Elsewherein Asia, Africa, and the Middle East (except Israel)most countries still
authorize capital punishment for many crimes and use it with varying frequency.

Methods of inflicting the death penalty have ranged from stoning in biblical times, crucifixion under the
Romans, beheading in France, to those which have been used in the United States: HANGING,
ELECTROCUTION, GAS CHAMBER, firing squad, and LETHAL INJECTION.

In the United States, beginning in 1967, executions were suspended to allow the appellate courts to decide
whether the death penalty was unconstitutional. In 1972 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled
in Furman v. Georgia that the death penalty for murder or for rape violated the prohibition against "cruel and
unusual punishment." The Court argued that death was meted out with "freakish" irregularity, and so its use
was "arbitrary" and "cruel."

Most of the states enacted new death-penalty statutes, however, and in 1976 the Supreme Court
in Gregg v. Georgia held that these were not unconstitutional. Capital statutes now typically authorize the trial
court to impose sentence (death or life) only after a post-conviction hearing, at which evidence is submitted to
establish which "aggravating" or "mitigating" factors were present in the crime. If the "aggravating" factors
prevail and the sentence is death, then the case is automatically reviewed by a state appellate court.

In 1977, however, the Supreme Court also ruled that death for rape was grossly disproportionate and
excessive (Coker v. Georgia). Thus, apart from certain crimes (notably, treason) on which the Supreme
Court has not ruled the only capital crime in the United States today is murder.

Various public opinion polls report that more than 70% of Americans favor the death penalty for murder. In
1977, executions resumed, and by 1991, some 2,350 persons were under death sentence in 36 states. About
150 persons (including one woman) had been executed.

Debate over the merits of capital punishment continues unabated. Proponents defend it mainly on two
grounds: death is the fitting punishment for murder, and executions maximize public safety through
incapacitation and deterrence.

Opponents reply that there is no evidence that de murder rate fluctuates according the frequency with
which the death penalty is used.
They also object that talionis (a life for a life) is not a sound principle of criminal justicethat society
cannot allow the brutalities of criminal violence to set the limits of appropriate punishments. Also disputed
is whether the death penalty continues (as critics claim) to manifest racial and socioeconomic bias. In
McCleskey v. Keemp (1987) the Supreme Court refused to rule that the death penalty as administered was
racially biased against blacks convicted of murdering whites.

MENS REA

Mens rea (Latin, guilty mind) is a concept used in Anglo-American criminal law to denote the element of
criminal intent in an offense. All legal systems require a showing for most crimes that the criminal intended
to commit a crime. In Anglo-American law, a criminal act is categorized in one of four ways, accordingly.

An offender who acts purposely has an actual and conscious intent to commit a crime, knowingly, I
aware that the conduct will cause a crime; recklessly, has a conscious disregard that the conduct may
have criminal consequences; negligently, acts with inadvertence to possible criminal harm to others.

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