The Abolition of Capital Punishment in California: A Legal & Moral Obligation
             California, and indeed the entire United States, has a lengthy tradition of capital punishment. Since the state's inception in 1850, California has sanctioned the death penalty as means to punish, deter, and, perhaps most significantly, seek retribution for certain offenses.
             However, in 1972, the United States Supreme Court's Furman v. Georgia decision held the death penalty unconstitutional. Citing the 8th Amendment barring cruel and unusual punishment, the court effectively stuck down all death-penalty statutes throughout the country. This decision had little to do with the moral questions posed by capital punishment; rather it was the manner in which sentences were being arrived at and who was punished that concerned the majority of justices. This decision marked a vital change in law nationwide and forced states to re-evaluate and revise their capital punishment statutes, in an effort to provide less arbitrary and more considerate sentencing. California thus restructured its law to include the two-stage, guilt and penalty phase trial, ushering in the modern era of capital punishment in the state.
             Current incarnation of the law allows a death sentence to be prescribed for homicide convictions with 'special' circumstances only, and requires that juries consider both mitigating and aggravating circumstances during sentencing. While these revisions have resulted in relatively more just and accurate sentencing, it remains impossible to completely eliminate the human factors that influence and skew such legal decisions. In mind it follows that this possibility raises a higher moral question to Californian's: is this a sound and fair manner with which to administer justice? Moreover, does and has capital punishment proven beneficial enough to the people of the state to merit its continued application?
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