Death Penalty Reforms

Moving into the nineteenth century, the abolitionist movement surrounding the death penalty began to come into effect. Many reforms were seen in many states during the early 1800s, including giving the jury discretion in imposing the death penalty and limiting the types of crimes (down to two in New Hampshire and Ohio by 1815) that were eligible for the death penalty. This is time when juries began to utilize their own power through the controversial actions known as “jury nullification,” in which they would simply acquit defendants they might otherwise have sentenced in order to avoid the imposition of a death penalty sentence. Further supports for reforms were seen as early in American history as 1879 in Wilkerson v. Utah. This court decision …show more content…
There were many within society at that time, especially in the Southern states among whites, that believed that the criminal justice system was failing them and forcing them to take their own course of action against “criminals.” Unsanctioned executions, or lynchings, occurred by the thousands, mostly within a few Southern states and mostly by whites against blacks, for around almost century. This indicates how fanatical the people of the time were about this form of punishment, and it indicates how desired it was as the most serious form of punishment. This lined up with the move away from the publicized executions towards a more centralized, controlled system of executions. The slow development of a privatized, government operated system with racially motivated individuals promoting it, the death penalty was sure to turn out to become quite a controversial matter, as it is today. The criminal justice system leaving the local powers and going into the state government’s control was the beginning of systematic racial bias/discrimination found even today in the imposition of the death