Legal Issues of Death Penalty

Legal Process of Death Penalty
To be eligible for a death sentence, a defendant must be convicted of first-degree murder and meet at least one of the twenty aggravating factors. Each state started out with having seven, but since then the legislature has added 13 more. If a judge or jury finds the defendant eligible for death, then a sentencing authority must weigh aggravating factors against any number of so-called “mitigating” factors, such as when a defendant has clear history of criminal activity. If there are no sufficient mitigating factors, then the court must sentence the defendant to death. This happens to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Furman v. Georgia and that decision’s progeny. The 1972 decision in Furman held that capital punishment, as it was administered in Georgia and Texas, constituted cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth amendments because it could be arbitrarily applied. That decision effectively was n...