CRM/LAW C165 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Gibbeting
3 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
American Death Penalty until Furman
• history of American Death Penalty
o common in England, from which we inherited our legal system
▪ for lots of crimes in addition to murder
• e.g. horse stealing
o common in colonial America
▪ for lots of crimes in addition to murder
• e.g. horse stealing
o constitution refers to death penalty
▪ thus, drafters must have assumed it was constitutional
▪ thus, 8th amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment must not have
referred to DP
o often quite brutal
▪ torture, gibbeting (displaying the corpse) etc.
▪ clemency often granted
▪ public executions
• suitable for family viewing
▪ tool of racial control, especially in the South
• lynching
▪ abolition movement mid-19th century
• Michigan, Rhode Island, Wisconsin
o renewed use for social control, in post-Reconstruction, Jim Crow-South
▪ law encoded different punishments for whites and blacks
▪ death penalty for rape
• frequent executions for black men convicted of raping white women
• zero executions for white men convicted of rape
• accusation issue
• NAACP-LDF moratorium strategy
o began in 1960s with representation of Black men charged with capital rape
o from 1930 to 1972, when rape was a capital offense, 405 of 455 men executed for
rape were Black
o expanded to include assistance to all defendants facing execution
o strategy was two-pronged
▪ have death penalty declared unconstitutional
▪ “throw sand in the machine”
o 1968 first year with no executions in US
o Witherspoon v. Illinois
▪ disqualification of anti-DP jurors not automatic; ok if they can administer
death sentence
▪ decision that year threw nearly all death sentences across country into doubt,
bringing a de facto moratorium
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