A Brief History of Capital Punishment - USA, Part I

Capital punishment go as far back as the Eighteenth Century B.C.. Back then you could face the death penalty for 25 different crimes. Death sentences was carried out by such means as crucifixion, drowning, beating to death, burning alive, and impalement.

In Great Britain during the 10 Century A.D., hanging was the new way to execute a person. In the following century it actually became forbidden, except in war times (Great Britain). This did not last very long. Capital punishment came back during the Sixteen Century, as well as some new methods to carry out the punishment. Boiling, burning at the stake, hanging, beheading and quartering was added to the options. Marrying a Jew or treason was enough to receive capital punishment. A bit later in the Seventeen Century cutting down a tree, or robbing a rabbit warren could be enough to get you executed.

Great Britain influenced the United States use of capital punishment. When European settlers came to the new world they brought the practice of capital punishment. The first documented execution in the new colonies was carried out in the Jamestown colony of Virginia in 1608. A man was executed for being a spy from Spain. In 1612 Virginia Governor Sir Thomas Dale provided the death penalty for crimes as stealing grapes, killing chickens and trading with Indians. Laws regarding Capital punishment varied from colony to colony.

The abolitionist movement found it's roots in the writing of European theorists Montesquieu, Voltaire and Bentham. But the most important essay was Cesare Beccaria's essay “On Crimes and Punishment”. The essay theorized that there was no justification for the state's taking of a life. American intellectuals was influenced by this, Thomas Jefferson introduced a bill to revise Virginia's death penalty laws. The bill proposed that capital punishment should only be used for crimes as murder and treason. It was defeated by only one vote. In 1794 Pennsylvania, as the first state repealed the death penalty for all offenses except first degree murder. In 1834 Pennsylvania became the first state to move executions away from the public eye. State penitentiaries was built. In 1846 Michigan became the first state to abolish the death penalty for all crimes except for treason. Later Rhode Island and Wisconsin abolished it for all crimes. Some states followed, but most of them held onto capital punishment.

During the Civil War the opposition to the death penalty waned, as more attention was given to the anti-slavery movement. At the end of the century the electrical chair was introduced. The first chair was built in New York in 1888.

1907 – 1917, six states completely abolished capital punishment, and three limited it to first degree murder of a law enforcement official. Some states took this back when people started to panic about revolution. The US had just entered WW I, and there was an intense class conflict. Socialism posted a big threat.

In 1924 cyanide was introduced, this offered a more humane way to execute inmates. The state tried to pump in gas to an inmates cell, to kill him in his sleep, but this failed. The gas chamber was invented.

During the 1930s there were more executions in the US than during any other decade in US history. In the 50s executions began to drop. Many nations around the world abandoned capital punishment. By 1966 the support for capital punishment in the US was at an all time low.

Sanna

For more info please visit: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/books-death-penalty

A New Series of Articles

Hello!

As you might have noticed I have not been writing that much on my own blog. I've been very busy with my internship. The good news is, that I, for a very long time wanted to write a series of articles about capital punishment. I finally decided to do it. I will write about the history of capital punishment, different nations, ongoing debates, and I will also introduce you to a man who's on death row at San Quentin State Prison. This man's name is Darrell Lomax, he has been on death row for over 15 years. At the moment I am looking through his case. To me it is unbelievable that capital punishment was given to him since the evidences against him are very weak. I will tell you more about Mr Lomax later.

Peace,

Sanna

HIV/AIDS and Stigma

Hello!

As you know I write articles for an NGO based at the UN.

The last months I have been working on HIV/AIDS prevention and by now I have written quite a few pieces on it. Please take a look at hem here:

http://globalaging.blogspot.com/

Bad Short Term Memory

Today I read a story about a young man who has lived almost all his life in a refugee camp. He came there at the age of two, and is still living there at the age of 22.

This refugee camp is found in Kenya, close to the Somalian border. It's the largest of it's kind in the whole world, with about 440 000 refugees, (about 80 percent of those are women and children). Every day more and more people arrive, but the camp has reached it's capacity.

The man who has been living in this camp for 20 years has no homeland. He dreams about moving to either Sweden or the USA. If I was to give my advice, I would recommend the US. Why?, you ask, because at the moment Sweden is struggling with internal problems regarding immigration. I like to call this problem The Swedish Democrats. If I never made this statement before I will make it now. The fact that they got in to the Swedish Government during the last elections makes me ashamed of Sweden. A lot of people point out that this is an ongoing trend in all of Europe, racist parties getting a lot of votes. Okay, so what? It is still unexceptionable. This 'trend' brings one thing to my mind. The time before and after WW II. The world agreed; Never Again'!

Horrifying images from Concentration Camps made us promise ourselves that this cannot happen again. Together we now had a collective memory of perhaps the most darkest and cruelest act by humans. Human beings are certainly not perfect, neither are their memory.

Pictures from my Internship at the UN - New York City

UN

UN party.

High Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS

Interns and Crew

Open- Ended Working Group meeting

"This is a man's world But it wouldn't be nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl"

Hello!

I was just surfing around the web today and thought I wanted to check up on Afghanistan, and the progress of the rights of women. In 2001 Bush and his administration mentioned human rights and the liberation of women as an excuse to invade the country. So let's see how that's been going.

According to a article by RAWA, released March this year, violence against Afghan women hit records. Abuses like forced marriage, and traditions are still all a huge challenge for country. Even if women choose to report abuses it rarely goes anywhere, and what's even worse is that women run the risk of being punished if they report rape.

Please see some of the stories here:

http://www.rawa.org/self_immolation/violence2.htm

Why has not anything improved since the invasion? Reports show us it is even getting worse than it was before 2001. These numbers are alarming and they indicate that women's rights are not prioritized on the agenda. How can this have happened? Stop by again next week and I will tell you why and how this is!

I hate to say I told you so.

It's now proven that the US has abandoned their most basic democratic believes.

http://wikileaks.ch/gitmo/

Running more than one blog

Hello!

As I previously said I did get an internship at Global Action on Aging. I will still run this blog, but you can also read the work I do for them here:

http://globalaging.blogspot.com/

Stay safe on this April fools day!

Sanna

Good News Everyone!

Hi!

I have some pretty marvelous news to share with you. Two weeks ago I went on an interview for an internship at the GAA - Global Action on Aging, and this week I found out I got the spot. I will be writing for them and be update their their blog.

To describe it short the GAA works towards strengthening older people's rights, towards a UN convention.

Check out the organization here:

http://www.globalaging.org/

Bye.

Closing Time

Hello

What ever happened to the promise by Obama, about closing Guantanamo? Guess what, I looked it up and it is still open. The word on the street is that Obama still really want it closed but Congress doesn't.

As one of his first acts as president Obama signed an executing order to close the military prison for terrorist suspects within a year. More than two years has passed. There are about 172 detainees remaining at the camp.

Art by Banksy

A little information about Guantanamo for those who has been living under a rock the last couple of years. The prison was opened and established by the Bush Administration in 2002. It's a place where they would take boys and men that could be terrorists during the Afghanistan and Iraq war. (They have stopped bringing detainees there). A place like Guantanamo is illegal, but because it is run by the USA it has become this issue who's stuck in a vacuum. It has not helped much that the rest of the world have been demanding that this camp has to close, there is not much the rest of us can do, an economic sanction towards the US would not do much. Another big problem is that the prisoners have not been given the combatant status, which normally would grantee some human rights, (according to the laws of war). This has left them with no rights what so ever. There has been many reports of human rights abuses happening at Guantanamo such as ongoing torture, sexual degradation, forced drugging and religious persecution being committed by US forces.

The sad part of all of this is that when Guantanamo finally is closed, there will be a new prison, and I am pretty sure there are more prisons like this, Guantanamo just happens to be the one we know of.

Also read my old post about Guantanamo:

http://fragmentationnation.blogspot.com/2009/04/camp-x-ray.html

Intervene or not?

The situation in Libya continues. There's an ongoing debate in Europe and the US whether an intervention should take place or not. If it is, the next question is by who, why and how?

If a legal intervention should take place, it needs to go through the UN security council. This is a slow process and some leaders thinks that there is not enough time to wait. So far there has been suggestions that the security council (SC) should apply a UN sanctioned no - fly zone over Libya to prevent Muammar Gaddafi from bombing or gassing his own people. The five permanent members of the SC is not unified about this decision. France make their point by saying that a military intervention cannot happen without a clear United Nation mandate. At the same time Ban Ki-moon says that even more action beyond UN sanctions might be needed, since in Libya the regime has lost it's legitimacy and has declared war on it's own people.

So far some sanctions has been backed up by the UN and as well as the European Union, including an arms embargo and travel bans, and some nations have announced their own asset freezes.

Throughout history there has been successful interventions and less successful ones. I do think that is it very important to be careful about the situation and make sure the situation is analyzed before taking action. But I do not think we wanna repeat some of the mistakes that has been made before (Rwanda comes to mind). If an intervention is to take place it should be under the a UN mandate. The next problem is to find the actual people to do it. The UN does not have their own army and therefor relies on the armies of it's member nations. The question which countries would be willing to offer some assistance. For instance, the US army is busy in Iraq and Afghanistan, also Obama would have difficulties explaining to the American people why they should be apart of yet another military operation. If an operation will take place I doubt it will be led by the US.

The best thing would of course be if Gaddafi just resigned and gave up his power. If he continues to kill civilians, the international community will probably start feeling the pressure to act.

Why?

I always had a strong believe that you cannot force reforms and change on a whole nation and it's people. I do believe that the 'west' has the ability and responsibility to inform, educate, and assist other nations when it's necessary and asked for. If change is going to happen, it has to come from inside the country. This is exactly what is happening in Libya and other places in the Middle East. Another important thing to look at is the fact that for a very long time the radical Islamists of the Arab world has been viewed as the revolutionaries. But what we are seeing now is quite to opposite. We are seeing people who believes in change, and are now speaking up.

These two elements together forms a very good basis for a real chance of change, so the rest of us should not turn our backs on people who has hope, and has shown that they are more than ready for something new to come.

Me in the Security Council in NYC

I read the news today, o boy.

Hello!

Over and over again we are facing news about young girls being approached by older men on internet. It's very common for these men to say they are model photographers who are looking for models. Since we live in a very shallow and vain society a lot of girls dream about becoming models. In these modern days our society does not pay too much attention to accomplishments that actually requires hard work and intelligence. Pop culture praise people who are famous because they happen to be children of very wealthy parents, or just happened to be on a private sex tape that somehow leaked out to the public. I would say that a lot of these people have very little knowledge about the real world. I've seen shows on TV where some of these glamorous people does not even know how to cut up a tomato. At the age of 21 I would think anyone would have been faced with this problem.

Anyhow, back to my point. Growing up thinking this is the best and only way to live makes young people easy targets for adults that has an ill mind. I am not saying this is the children's fault at all. With new technology kids are facing these kind of problems each day. I do have a few thoughts about it though. I remember when I was 15, I had a profile on a social network site called Lunarstorm (don't know if it still exists), I was approached by a strange man perhaps in this late 40s. He said he was looking for models, and that he thought I was perfect for what he had in mind. At the age of 15 this sounded super cool. But, to me it sounded a little bit sketchy, so what I did was that I wrote the man back and said that it sounded like fun, but I wanted to talk to my mum about it and see what she thought. I figured that if this is a real and honest man he would not mind me talking to my parents. So yeah, guess what! I never heard from him again.

It is important children realize that 'candy man' is not the evil and fishy looking man walking the streets. He/she has found new modern ways. I know kids already knows this. But, still it happens all the time. Is the dream of becoming a model so big that you are willing to risk your own safety? It is probably even more important that kids realize that being famous is not all there is. I would like to see a society that celebrate other things than fame, money and good looks.

That is all for now.

Related post:

http://fragmentationnation.blogspot.com/2008/12/get-seduced.html

Also, a great South Park episode that touch the same subject:

http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s08e12-stupid-spoiled-whore-video-playset