ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses why people need the death penalty and what they must do in order to remove the warts, including geographical and racial disparity, cost, quality of capital legal defense, and the continuing controversies and litigation over methods of execution. The more recent constitutional challenges to the death penalty itself center on the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. P. Cassell argues that incapacitation is the most straightforward argument and the simplest justification to grasp because it saves innocent lives by preventing convicted murders from killing again. Retribution is a function of the government to mete out justice to those who have violated the codified criminal law of the state. Public opinion has produced a significant influence on death penalty policymakers and court decisions in the modern era. Yet public opinion as a source of power and influence may be problematic due to the so-called "Marshall hypotheses".
