ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents the latest research and thinking about capital punishment, or the death penalty, in the United States (US). It provides some people, and all those interested in the subject, with a current and comprehensive compendium of valid death penalty knowledge with the hope that their death penalty opinions will become informed by accurate and evidence-based information. Death penalty opinion has been used by both state supreme courts and the US Supreme Court as a measure of "evolving standards of decency" regarding what constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment" in state constitutions and under the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution. Decline in death penalty support was cited as such a measure in Furman v. Georgia, the 1972 landmark decision that abolished capital punishment in the US for the first and only time.
