Home Learn about the death penalty in the United States.
The ominous news for capital punishment proponents is that recent legal changes to the system have so reduced the safety net on death row that the constitutionality of death penalty procedures and practices may now be in jeopardy. The death penalty in America has had a roller-coaster existence over the past four centuries. Alternately encouraged and banned, praised and abhorred, it is one of the most contentious issues and practices in our legal system and in our political consciousness. The past 10 years have seen a vast increase in the number of executions in the United States, due mostly to changes in federal and state laws designed to reduce the number of appeals death row inmates receive. And as more state laws call for capital punishment, new federal laws also are prescribing executions for drug kingpins, terrorists and other violent criminals.