Capital Punishment in Texas

Introduction

Capital punishment also referred to as the death penalty, is the putting to death of an individual through a legal process as a penalty for a crime. Offenses that call for a death sentence are called capital crimes. The word capital can trace its origins to Latin, capitalis, which translates to concerning the head (Latin caput). Consequently, a capital offense was initially punished by severing the offenders head.

Capital punishment was practiced in all societies n the past. However, currently, no more than 58 countries actively apply it, 95 countries have eradicated it and the remaining ones have not implemented it in more than ten years and will only be allowed it in extreme cases like war. Punishment by death is a source of dynamic controversy in many nations and states, with the positions varying within a particular political philosophy or a cultural section. Capital punishment is prohibited among members of the European Union.

The state of Texas and its antecedent entities have practiced capital punishment since 1819. Since, 1,201 alleged criminals (including six females) have been lawfully executed using various methods; hanging, electrocution, firing squad, and the use of a lethal injection. Most of these were for the capital punishments for murder, while other felonies like rape have been punished by death sentences. Under the present state regulation, only the offense of capital murder or the repeated conviction for the rape of a minor is suitable for the death sentence.

After its reinstitution in the United States death penalty, in the Gregg v. Georgia assessment, starting since 1982, Texas has put to death (using the lethal injection) more convicts than any other state, considering that California and Florida states boast a bigger death penalty populace than Texas.

What policies does the State of Texas jurisdiction use to ensure capital punishment cases are handled correctly?

Jurisdiction is the realistic power granted to an officially constituted lawful organization or to a political head to handle and deal with and draw declarations on official matters and to oversee impartiality in a defined section of accountability. Otherwise to arbitrate and implement lawful matters. Although Texas is the consistent number one state in America in yearly executions, she has tagged along with a national trend with a turndown in death penalties in 2009. Death Penalty Information Centre (2010). The U.S. Supreme Court regulated that each time a ruling jury can enforce a capital sentence; it is an obligation that it is informed beforehand if the offender would be entitled to parole. Capital punishment (2009). This meant to prevent passing capital sentences on a convict who does not deserve to die.

The Capital Punishment Project (CPP) is a state venture by the American Civil Liberties Union. The CPP holds public teaching and advocacy, organized restructuring and tactical litigation, including undeviating legal representation of capital offenders. The CPP confronts injustice and randomness in capital sentences and works toward its eventual repeal.

The CPP is presently undertaking capital legal action in courts all over the nation, and especially in the United States Supreme Court. Generally, its proceedings are focused on innocently judged persons, psychologically ill people, persons facing execution due to unethical legal representation, general inequity, and humanizing the justice in capital trials and petitions. Punishment Project (2004).

The individual price of this ethnic injustice is immense. An almost all-white faction of prosecutors is settling the choice about who gets to live and who is to die along with cultural positions. The death sentence illustrates a desolate symbol of the results of racial prejudice. In personalized cases, discrimination is present in racial insults flung at black Americans accused by the trial and the defense. The results are in black American jurors being methodically excluded from service, and in the allocation of more funds to white murder victims at the cost of black sufferers. The results in a death punishment whereby blacks are often executed for killing whites, but the whites are rarely punished for homicides against blacks. Such a flawed justice system is not only unjust and illegal, but it also tears away the very values the same state struggles to abide by.

Unconcealed racism is common in the states courtrooms around the nation. In capital offense, a case, the use of disparaging slurs bring back the memories of the inferno of discrimination and leads the jury to umpire severely those they desire to scapegoat to the dilemma of a felony. An example is when in the Gregg v. Georgia the Supreme Court awarded its seal of endorsement toward capital punishment; this support was allowed on the pledge that capital punishment was to be managed through equality and impartiality. On the contrary, the given word has turned out to be an unkind and empty contempt. If not corrected, the disgraceful state of the current x capital punishment system will continue casting shame over the legal system.

One of you two is gonna hang for this. Since youre the nigger, youre elected (Dieter, 1998). These are the words said by a Texas law administrator to Clarence Brandley, who went on to be charged for the slaying of a white American high school student. He was acquitted of death sentence, 10 years after he was convicted.

Conclusion

The State of Texas jurisdiction is working hard to ensure that the rights of the offenders are upheld. It needs to fight racism too as this is the direct cause of bitterness amongst the minority groups in Texas, and especially the black Americans.