In the 1958 Supreme Court case Trop v. Dulles, the Supreme Court decided that the “Eighth Amendment contained an "evolving standard of decency that marked the progress of a maturing society"” (Introduction). The Supreme Court heard many other cases regarding the Constitutionality of the death penalty, including U.S. v. Jackson, and Witherspoon v. Illinois. In the U.S. v. Jackson case, the “Supreme Court heard arguments regarding a provision of the federal kidnapping statute requiring that the death penalty be imposed only on the recommendation of the jury” (Introduction). In the Witherspoon v. Illinois case, the “Supreme Court held that a potential juror's mere reservations about the death penalty were insufficient grounds to prevent that person from serving on the jury in a death penalty case” (Introduction).
On June 29, 1972, the Supreme Court successfully invalidated forty death penalty statutes, commuting the sentences of 629 death row inmates. In 1976, in the Gregg v. Georgia case, the Supreme Court allowed states to rewrite their death penalty statutes (Peterson). In 2002, the United States Supreme Court banned the execution of the severely mentally retarded. Then, in March 2005, the Supreme Court outlawed the execution of juveniles, which saved the lives of seventy-two juveniles on death row nationwide. In 2004, the death penalty statutes in New York and Kansas were ruled unconstitutional (Peterson).
Although many people are sentenced to the death penalty each year, the number of executions that actually take place is quite small. In the 1930s, over 150 people were executed every year. In the 1950s, only about half of the prisoners on death row were executed. From 1966 to 1983, only fourteen people out of the 10,151 people on death row were executed (Prisoners). In 2004, there were 3,314 prisoners on death row, and only 59 of them were executed (Executions). Since 1999, death sentences have dropped fifty-four percent and executions have dropped forty percent (Peterson).
