Link to Death Penalty Information Center Fact Sheet 
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/FactSheet.pdf 
See Death Penalty Fast Facts at 
https://www.cnn.com/2013/07/19/us/death-penalty-fast-facts/index.html 
The use of the death penalty as a response to crime in industrialized nations raises many questions: 
• Is the death penalty a deterrent? 
• Is the death penalty justified by principles of retribution? 
• Is the death penalty morally or ethically justified? 
• Does it cost more to impose a death sentence or to impose a true-life sentence? 
• Are factually innocent individuals erroneously executed (and if so, how often)? 
• Is any particular manner of execution cruel and unusual? 
• Is the death penalty, in itself, cruel and unusual punishment? 
Courts answer only the last two questions, and, to date, the Court has upheld every manner of execution 
that is currently approved in the United States: firing squad, electrocution, gas chamber, hanging, and lethal 
injection. The Court appears willing to uphold capital punishment and has found it is not disproportionately 
cruel and unusual when the crime for which the defendant was convicted resulted in the death of another. 
It has reached an opposite result when the crime did not involve the victim’s death, for example, when the 
defendant was convicted of rape of an adult woman and a child rape. See, Coker v. Georgia, 433 U.S. 584 
(1977) The Court prohibited capital punishment for the crime of rape of an adult victim. Coker suggests that 
the death penalty is an inappropriate punishment for any crime that does not involve the taking of human 
life. In Kennedy v. Louisiana, 554 U.S. 407 (2008), the Court invalidated a Louisiana statute that allowed 
for the death penalty for rape of a child less than twelve years of age.  Justice Kennedy (not the defendant, 
Kennedy) wrote, “the Eighth Amendment bars imposing the death penalty for the rape of a child where the 
crime did not result and was not intended to result, in the death of the victim.” 
 Mental Illness, Mental Deterioration and the Death Penalty 
According to Court interpretations, the Eighth Amendment forbids the execution of someone who is legally 
insane. Ford v. Wainwright, 477 US 399 (1986). In 2007, the Court ruled that a prisoner is entitled to a hearing to 
determine his mental condition upon making a preliminary showing that his current mental state would bar his 
execution. Panetti. v. Quarterman, 551 US 930 (2007). In one case, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in 2013 held 
that a trial court illegally ordered the forcible medication of a mentally ill death row inmate, Steven Stanley, for the 
purpose of rendering him competent to be executed. See, http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org. Staley’s mental health 
began to deteriorate when he entered death row in 1991. He received an execution date in 2006 but was deemed 
too ill to be executed. A court ordered that his paranoid schizophrenia is treated by forcible medication, which 
continued for six years. In its ruling, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals held that “the evidence conclusively 
shows that appellant’s competency to be executed was achieved solely through the involuntary medication, which 
the trial court had no authority to order under the competency-to-be-executed statute. The finding that appellant 
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