Death Penalty
The Innocence Protection Act is the first federal death penalty reform to be enacted. Since the federal reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976,in 2002 more than 100 people have been released from death rows across the United States because of procedural errors or newly discovered evidence of their innocence.
The Innocence Protection Act is a first attempt at ensuring innocent people are not put to death. Thirty-six states and the federal government have enacted legislation that permits the courts to impose death as a criminal sentence. Of those thirty-six states, Texas executed the most inmates during 2009 with 24 executions. The total number of executions in the United States in 2009 was 52. In 2009, the total number of inmates serving a death sentence in the United States was 3,173.
Read more about this topic: Innocence Protection Act
Famous quotes containing the words death and/or penalty:
“Time is here and you’ll go his way.
Your lung is waiting in the death market.
Your face beside me will grow indifferent.
Darling, you will yield up your belly and be
cored like an apple.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“My excuse for not lecturing against the use of tobacco is, that I never chewed it; that is a penalty which reformed tobacco-chewers have to pay; though there are things enough I have chewed which I could lecture against.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)