Death penalty

[greyark]

Can anyone tell me how many states in the U.S.A still have the death penalty and if there is a national debate on this.

[naomi24]

http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/dpus a.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/us/18deter.h tml

[lajohn]

wizard i think the behaviour of some folks
on here warrant them for the death penalty.

[greyark]

hey noknowledge. When you stop posing as a 14 year old, you can add your comment, otherwise, leave it to the experts, which you ain't.

[Octavius]

As of the 2002, only the District of Columbia and 12 states do not have the death penalty. The states which have abolished executions are typically northern: Alaska, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia and Wisconsin. However, seven jurisdictions have the death penalty but have not performed any executions since 1976. They are also mostly northern: Connecticut, Kansas, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, South Dakota and the U.S. military.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Death_penal ty_statutes_in_the_United_States.svg#file

Various groups oppose or support capital punishment. Amnesty International and some religions oppose capital punishment on moral grounds, while the Innocence Project works to free wrongly convicted prisoners, including death row inmates. Other groups, such as the Southern Baptists, law enforcement, and some victims' rights groups support capital punishment.

Opinion polls consistently show that a majority of the American public supports the death penalty. A May 2005 Gallup poll had 74% of respondents in "favour of the death penalty for a person convicted of murder". In the same Gallup poll, when life imprisonment without parole was given as an option as a punishment for murder, 56% supported the death penalty and 39% supported life imprisonment, with 5% offering no opinion.

In 1986, three justices were removed from the Supreme Court of California by the electorate specifically because of their opposition to the death penalty.

US is ranked 5th in the world for the number of capital punishment executions in a year - 42 in 2007 approximately one tenth of the "official" tally for China.