Counseling Chapter 20 The Death Penalty Learning Objectives After Reading This Students Should

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CHAPTER 20
The Death Penalty
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After reading this chapter, students should be able to:
1. Compare and contrast the issues in the debate over capital punishment.
3. Discuss the legal issues that surround the death penalty.
5. Speculate about the future of capital punishment.
LESSON PLAN
Correlated to PowerPoints
I. The Debate over Capital Punishment
Learning Objective 1: Compare and contrast the issues in the debate over capital punishment.
A. The debate over capital punishment: Retribution, deterrence, and incapacitation are
usually cited as the reasons for keeping the death penalty.
B. Arguments supporting capital punishment:
1. The death penalty deters individuals from committing violent acts.
3. The death penalty prevents individuals who have committed murder from doing
further harm.
C. Arguments opposing capital punishment:
2. It is wrong for a government to participate in the intentional killing of its
citizens.
4. Innocent people have been executed.
Class Discussion/Activity
Break the students into groups based on their overall opinion of the death penalty, regardless of
the state’s philosophy. Allow the students to debate this topic.
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Instructor’s Manual
2
Media Tool
Visit http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/node/6719
o Execution of the Mentally Ill
o Discuss this in class. What are the recent trends in executing those who may be deemed
“mentally ill” or “intellectually disabled”? Ask students to weigh in on the practice of
capital punishment to those who fit into these and other categories of mental disability.
See Assignments 1 and 2
II. The Death Penalty in America
Learning Objective 2: Explain the history of the death penalty in America.
A. The death penalty has been controversial since colonial times. Executions were carried
out in public until the 1830s; it has strong historical roots in American culture.
B. Death Row Population
1. Between 1930 and 1967, before the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a stay of
executions, 3,859 men and women were executed by state and federal authorities.
3. After the Supreme Court reaffirmed the constitutionality of the death penalty in
4. The numbers of people facing the death penalty increased dramatically between
1976 and 2000, but it has begun to fall slightly since 2000.
5. As of 2016, 2,902 people were awaiting execution.
C. Public Opinion: Since 1936, Gallup has asked the public, “Do you favor or oppose the
death penalty for persons convicted of murder?”
2. With the rise in crime in the late 1960s, opinion shifted to a tougher stance.
4. Currently, it is estimated that 60 percent of Americans support the death
penalty.
6. The public is about evenly split when respondents were asked to choose
between life without parole and death.
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Chapter 20: The Death Penalty
What If Scenario
What if a defendant murdered one of your family members? Would you vote for or against the
perpetrator receiving the death penalty or be accepting of a life sentence?
III. The Death Penalty and the Constitution
Learning Objective 3: Discuss the legal issues that surround the death penalty.
A. Death obviously differs from other punishments in that it is final and irreversible. The
Supreme Court has examined the decision-making process in capital cases to ensure that
the Constitution’s requirements regarding due process, equal protection, and cruel and
unusual punishment are fulfilled.
B. Key U.S. Supreme Court Decisions
1. Furman v. Georgia (1972): The death penalty, as administered, constituted
cruel and unusual punishment.
2. Gregg v. Georgia (1976): Laws that required the sentencing judge or jury to
take into account specific aggravating and mitigating factors in deciding which
3. McCleskey v. Kemp (1987): The Court rejected a challenge to the Georgia
5. Ring v. Arizona (2002): The Supreme Court ruled that juries, rather than
6. Roper v. Simmons (2005): A majority of the justices decided that individuals
cannot be sentenced to death for crimes they committed before they reached the
age of 18.
Class Discussion/Activity
Have students read the Supreme Court decision in Georgia v. Furman. Do they think the ruling
still has currency today? Have a class discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of the
Furman ruling.
C. Continuing Legal Issues
1. Execution of the Mentally Ill
a. Ford v. Wainwright (1985): Rickey Ray Rector
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© 2019 Cengage. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or
in part.
b. Although the Supreme Court has ruled that the mentally ill should not
be executed, how competence should be determined remains an issue. A
second issue concerns the morality of treating an individual’s mental
illness so that they can be executed.
2. Effective Counsel
a. Strickland v. Washington (1984): The Supreme Court ruled that
3. Death-Qualified Juries
a. The Supreme Court has ruled that potential jurors who have general
objections to the death penalty or whose religious convictions oppose its
use cannot be automatically excluded from jury service in capital cases.
b. However, they can be removed during voir dire.
What If Scenario
What if a potential juror opposed the death penalty? Should that person be excluded from jury
duty?
4. Execution for Child Rape
5. Appeals
a. The writ of habeas corpus is the only means by which the federal courts
can hear challenges to the convictions and sentences by individuals in
state prisons.
b. McCleskey v. Zant (1991): Except in exceptional circumstances, lower
federal courts must dismiss second and subsequent habeas corpus
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Chapter 20: The Death Penalty
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What If Scenario
What if you had the ability to change the average amount of time individuals spent on death row
and follow through on executions in a more timely manner? Would you? If so, why and if not,
why not?
6. International Law
a. The rights of foreign nationals in the criminal justice system have added
a new dimension to legal issues surrounding the death penalty.
b. As of April 2014, 139 foreign nationals from 36 countries were on
d. President George W. Bush announced in February 2005 that the United
States will comply with the Vienna Convention.
i. In November 2006, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals said
that the president did not have the power to direct such a review.
Media Tool
Visit http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/death-by-fire/
o “Death by Fire”
o Discuss this in class. Ask students if they had any knowledge of this case before reading
the article. Have them debate whether or not Cameron Todd Willingham was guilty of
the crime he was charged with and convicted of.
IV. Individuals on Death Row
Learning Objective 4: Characterize the individuals on death row.
A. Who Is on Death Row?
1. Individuals on death row tend to be poorly educated men from low-income
backgrounds; the number of minority group members is far out of proportion to
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2. Most individuals on death row have a prior felony conviction.
3. As of 2016, there were 55 women on death row.
B. Where Was the Crime Committed?
1. About 51 percent of those under sentence of death are in the South, 36 percent
2. About 65 percent of all executions from 19772017 have been carried out in
five states: Texas (542), Virginia (112), Oklahoma (112), Florida (92), and
Missouri (88).
Class Discussion/Activity
Research a female who was put to death. Determine what crime she committed and allow
students to discuss the case. Would they have changed the sentence, and what is their perspective
of the individual’s case?
C. Who Was the Prosecutor?
2. Even within states, the probability that a prosecutor will ask for the death
penalty differs.
D. Was Race a Factor?
2. Research shows imposition of the death penalty in Georgia was influenced by
the race of the murder victim and, to a lesser extent, the race of the offender.
3. The death sentence is more likely to be imposed when the victim was white. (In
See Assignments 3 and 4
V. A Continuing Debate
Learning Objective 5: Speculate about the future of capital punishment.
A. In January 2000, Illinois Governor George Ryan, a longtime supporter of the death
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1. Ryan noted that since 1976, Illinois had executed 12 people yet freed 13 from
3. This signaled a major shift in death penalty politics.
Class Discussion/Activity
Have the class develop a survey regarding the capital punishment. Allow the students to
administer this to 10 people and report their findings back to the class. Include if the survey had
a surprising effect on the student. Were the outcomes different than expected?
What If Scenario
What if evidence of someone’s innocence surfaced after the person was convicted and sentenced
to death? Should a new trial be given? Should it be brought into appellate review?
Media Tool
Visit http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/multimedia-1?did=142&scid=42
o Death Penalty Information Center
o Have students spend time browsing the site, then discuss the different things they learned
about the death penalty as a class. (Students will have each discovered different
information on this comprehensive site depending on where they browsed.) Were they
surprised at the statistics they found, the types of crimes punishable by death, or any
other information?
LECTURE NOTES
Chapter 20 focuses in the death penalty. Students generally find this topic quite compelling. Yet
it is also true that conversation on controversial issues can get out of hand. It is a good idea to put
boundaries and terms on the discussion. If you and the class created terms to debate when
working on Chapter 19, use them again here. If not, then this too is a good place to encourage
students to generate respectful terms by which to engage one another.
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Instructor’s Manual
The authors give a short history of execution in America. What is important for students to
recognize is that this has always been a controversial practice. Debate on the issue is not a new
phenomenon. The chapter highlights the nuance and complications associated with determining
public opinion on the death penalty.
This chapter describes who is on death row. The authors also illustrate demographics on crime
location, prosecutors, and matters of race. It is important for students to be aware of all the steps
in the process and the role discretion plays throughout. Fairness is often an issue that arises when
discussing capital punishment. It may be useful to discuss the concept of fairness and what its
role in the criminal justice system ought to be.
ASSIGNMENTS
1. Refer students to the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, Section 2 (Public
2. Ask students to reflect on what might be appropriate ways to raise awareness about death
penalty issues. Show them a commercial that aired on MTV, and ask who the target
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3. Refer students to the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics
4. Have students discuss their opinions on convicted males and convicted females in terms
ANSWERS TO END-OF-CHAPTER DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Although the answers provided below will vary from student to student, the responses should
include at a minimum a discussion of the following key points.
1. What are the major arguments supporting and opposing capital punishment? Which one seems
to you the most important?
2. Which of the continuing legal issues should be scrutinized by the Supreme Court as in
violation of the Eighth Amendment?
3. Given that the death penalty has been abolished in other Western democracies, why do people
in the United States support it?
4. What alternatives to death might achieve the retributive, deterrent, and incapacitative goals of
capital punishment?
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© 2019 Cengage. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or
in part.

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