In the last edition of this book it was noted that Georgia had switched from lethal injection to electrocution. Georgia, however, is an interesting case. While five states, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, New York, and Ohio, have changed from electrocution to lethal injection. Five states have changed their method of execution. In the last five years, the method of execution has become the most controversial element of death penalty statutes. Other common non-homicide capital offenses are kidnapping, hijacking, and other serious crimes that involve hostage-taking or placing a victim in extreme danger. Of note is California, often known for its radical politics, which lists treason as a capital crime. There are twelve states that authorize the death penalty for non-homicide crimes. In some of these cases, the state legislature can either revise or rewrite the death penalty statute if it chooses to make it the law. In a few states, the statute remains on the books though it has been declared unconstitutional. Thirty-eight states currently have death penalty statutes on the books. As of this writing, new cases on the death penalty are currently wending their way through the courts to the Supreme Court. This does not mean that the process is not still open to attack. ![]() The Supreme Court has since handed down explicit guidelines defining the legal imposition of the death penalty, allowing states a new opportunity to legislate a legal death penalty statute that is less likely to be ruled unconstitutional in the future. For instance, in many of these states one of two defendants accused of identical unrelated crimes committed within weeks of each other drew the death sentence while the other did not, merely because the statute under which they were sentenced was ruled unconstitutional in the intervening time. This shifting status often brought unbalanced -unjust -sentencing. Consequently, many states have gone through periods in which the death penalty was held as legal, then illegal, then revised and held as legal, then illegal again, and then further revised and held as legal once more. ![]() In general, it was held that since the sentence was so severe, the law must impose the strictest standards of proof to sentence a defendant to death. On the books in most states, the death penalty has been challenged by many, originally on grounds that it violated the Constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, and later on the procedural grounds that there were not enough due process protections for defendants accused of capital crimes. The acceptance of capital punishment, or the death penalty, as a sentence for heinous criminal acts has been hotly debated across the nation over the last few decades.
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