英语论文网

ionists and they could talk about the problem openly, as a result the death penalty in Austria and Tuscany was abolished.
The educated people in America were also under the influence of Beccaria. The start of the reforms of the death penalty in the U.S. occurred when Thomas Jefferson produced a bill as a kind of new law concerning the death penalty. The two cases for death penalty were the crimes of murder and treason.
Later on Dr. Benjamin Rush, he was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and he founded the Pennsylvania Prison Society, showed his hesitation about the fact that the death penalty serves as deterrence. On the contrary he supported the theory that having a death penalty only increased criminal cases. He was supported by Benjamin Franklin and Philadelphia Attorney General William Bradford. In 1794, Pennsylvania eliminated the death penalty for the rest of the crimes and only the first degree murder was still punished through death.
In the nineteenth century a great role for the matter of death punishment was played by the abolitionist movement. Many states considered and reduced the number of their capital crimes and presented state penitentiaries. In 1834, Pennsylvania became the first state to stop making executions in front of all public and carried them out at some special places. In 1846, Michigan was the first state that abolished the death penalty for all crimes, but for treason. By the end of the century such countries as Venezuela, Portugal, Netherlands, Costa Rica, Brazil and Ecuador followed the example.
Some states of the USA eliminated the death punishment, but some didn’t. Some states even worsened the situation by applying some special laws towards slaves. In 1838 the tendency to use some special places for execution instead of making it in public developed. The reforms in 1838 in Tennessee, and later in Alabama brought enactment of discretionary death penalty statutes. “This introduction of sentencing discretion in the capital process was perceived as a victory for abolitionists because prior to the enactment of these statutes, all states mandated the death penalty for anyone convicted of a capital crime, regardless of circumstances. With the exception of a small number of rarely committed crimes in a few jurisdictions, all mandatory capital punishment laws had been abolished by 1963.” (Naftali Bendavid, “U.S. study rebuts death penalty bias: Critics: Report on race issue flawed,” Chicago Tribune, 2001-JUN-7 pp.3).
The Civil War played also a positive role for death penalty abolishment, as people were more concentrated on anti – slavery movement. And the end of the century on the contrary were made some new contributions to the death punishment when the electric char emerged. For the first time it was made in New York in 1888 and two years later was used for William Kemmler. As time passed other states also accepted this execution method.
The Twentieth Century is known for the “Progressive Period” of the reforms in the USA. The atmosphere was rather intense as people in the USA were afraid of the influence of the Russian Revolution. Later the USA took part in the World War 1 and the result were the social conflicts between socialists and capitalists. As a result, most abolitionist states re-established their death penalty by 1920.
Between years 1920s and 1940s this issue was again discussed as criminologists were proving that the death penalty was a kind of necessary social measur