In a 1986 poll 70% of Americans favored the death penalty as a punishment for murder, showing that most Americans believe that the death penalty is a good form of punishment for those who taken away the lives of others. Although, there is still the 30% who are not in favor of the death penalty, and think it is immoral. .
Over the years there have been some Supreme Court cases that have ruled against certain procedure that involve the death penalty. The most interesting of all of these cases was "Furman vs. Georgia in 1972, where the Court's vote was 5 to 4, and the justices offered no majority opinion."(Ivers434) "The justices issued a short per curiam order declaring the Georgia and Texas laws unconstitutional, each justice wrote a separate opinion explaining his vote."(Ivers434) This case temporarily suspended the death penalty, showing that the laws that were established for the death penalty needed to be fixed, because they were in violation of the eighth and fourteenth amendments, therefore suspending the death penalty. " The death penalty, as imposed, was arbitrary, carried racially discriminatory overtones, and lacked clear judicial guidelines in the sentencing stages."(Ivers439) .
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Another case that ruled against the death penalty was a very recent Supreme Court case, Miller-El v. Cockrell, which was decided on in 2003. "The Supreme Court ruled in his favor that Miller-El should have been given the opportunity to prove that his death sentence was the result of discriminatory jury practices. Such practices included the so called "Texas shuffle" to limit or eliminate African American jurors. Other practices included disparate questioning of potential jurors based on race, and a training memo instructing prosecutors on ways to skew juries based on race." (www.aclu.org pg 1) This case ruled that it was illegal to eliminate jurors based upon their race, and said that a juror, even in a capital punishment case has the right to a fair selection of jurors for their criminal case.