ABSTRACT
The framers at the 1787 Constitutional Convention accepted the death penalty and provided for its existence by imposing limits on the prosecution in capital cases. In 1790 Congress enacted the first federal death penalty statute. Congress passed a bill in 1897 entitled "An Act to Reduce the Cases in Which the Death Penalty May Be Inflicted." Congress expanded the federal death penalty to almost sixty different offenses. The first post-Gregg attempt by Congress to reformulate the federal death penalty scheme was the Drug Kingpin Act of 1988. There are several civil rights and liberties problems surrounding the Federal Death Penalty Act. A Justice Department study found racial and geographic disparities in the application of the federal death penalty. One federal judge argued that the risk of executing an innocent person was too great. These decisions have been reversed on appeal, but the Death Penalty Act will continue to be litigated in the courts for years.
