Top 5 Facts About Capital Punishment

Top 5 Facts About Capital Punishment

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The History of Capital Punishment in the United States

Don’t expect a last minute call from the governor to save you. Welcome to WatchMojo’s Top 5 Facts. In this installment, we’re counting down our picks for the Top 5 Facts about capital punishment.

#5: Ancient Babylonians Would Kill You for Anything

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The death penalty goes way back: the earliest set of written laws concerning capital punishment can be found in the Code of Hammurabi, dating back to the 18th century B.C. 30 different crimes warranted the death penalty, each with its own form of execution depending on the crime. For example, those who were convicted of burglary were hanged; those who were caught stealing items during a fire were thrown into that same fire, and those who were found guilty of adultery or rape were drowned. Incest, bigamy, kidnapping, fraud, among many other crimes also meant being put to death.

#4: Texas Stopped Serving Last Meals In 2011

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One person really can ruin it for everyone. After convicted murderer Lawrence Brewer “abused the process” by ordering an excessively large final meal, the state decided to no longer fulfill special last meal requests for death row inmates. Brewer had ordered two chicken fried steaks with gravy and onions, a triple-patty bacon cheeseburger, a cheese omelette, a bowl of fried okra with ketchup, one pound of barbecued meat, three fajitas, a meat-lover’s pizza, one pint of Blue Bell Ice Cream, some peanut butter fudge with crushed nuts, and three root beers. Then when Brewer got the order, he said he wasn’t hungry and didn’t eat any of it. Outraged by this action, one state senator wrote a letter to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice asking them to end the practice of last meal requests, and the department complied.

And by new ways– we actually mean going back to old ways. In 2011, an embargo from the European Union prevented drug companies from getting key ingredients for lethal injections to the U.S. As a result, various states have passed laws to use old, discarded methods of execution as backup in case they no longer have access to the drugs. Utah has brought back firing squads, which were previously optional for prisoners. Tennessee is using the electric chair as their backup, and Oklahoma decided on the gas chamber. Oklahoma has also decided to experiment with a new drug for lethal injections, midazolam, which has resulted in excruciating deaths in Ohio and Arizona, but was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2015.

#2: Capital Punishment Probably Does Not Deter Crime

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According to a study published by the University of Colorado in 2009, 88% of the top criminologists in the United States surveyed said they don’t believe the death penalty is an effective deterrent to murder. In fact, 75% of the same criminologists believe that the death penalty serves as a distraction, preventing state legislature and Congress from enacting real solutions. If those numbers aren’t convincing enough, a 2012 report by the National Research Council looked at more than 30 years of data, and stated that studies which claimed that the death penalty was a deterrent to crime were based on flawed methodology, and should not be considered when determining policy. The report concluded that these studies are unreliable since they failed to take into account key information, such as non-capital punishment options, so the model of capital punishment as a deterrent isn’t credible.

Justice doesn’t come cheap. A 2011 study published in the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review found that since California reinstated the death penalty in 1978, the state’s taxpayers have spent more approximately $4 billion to kill a total of 13 prisoners– which comes out to about $308 million for each execution. The authors broke down that $1.94 billion went to trial costs, $925 million went to automatic and state appeals, $775 million went to federal appeals, and $1 billion went to the actual incarceration the inmates. That’s obviously a lot of money, but what’s even more astounding is that it would actually be less expensive to give a lifetime sentence to prisoners instead of the death penalty. The same study found that a death penalty prosecution costs up to 20 times as much as a life-without-parole case. So, what did we leave out? What do you think is the most interesting fact about capital punishment? For more lethal Top 10 s and human rights abusing Top 5s published every day, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com.