ABSTRACT
The American death penalty is in decline. The number of United States (US) executions fell from 98 in 1999 to 43 in 2012, leading one set of scholars to characterize America's death penalty as on a downhill slope'. The conventional wisdom is that America's founders and framers those responsible for approving Declaration of Independence and US Constitution and its Bill of Rights, ratified in 1788 and 1791, respectively were avid death penalty supporters. The United States of America, which declared its independence from Great Britain in 1776, inherited its legal system and traditions from England a country that frequently inflicted death sentences. The eighteenth-century period of America's birth and the country's parting of ways with King George III was a time of violent revolutions as well as that of the Enlightenment. Executions in the US are heavily concentrated in the South, with studies showing the odds of receiving a death sentence increase dramatically for African Americans who kill whites.
