capital punishment was brought to North American colonizing powers. In the American colonies, before the American Revolution, legislation characteristically applied the death penalty to a long list of offenses. In most colonies executions were frequently carried out (Costanzo 26). In the years following the American Revolution, the number of offenses punishable by death declined. Then, at the end of the eighteenth-century efforts were made to abolish the death penalty. The Quakers led this movement in England and American colonies. Many states in the United States, led by Michigan in 1847, have abolished the death penalty entirely. The other states to abolish capital punishment was Rhode Island in 1852, Wisconsin in 1853, Maine in 1876, Minnesota in 1911, North Dakota in1915, Alaska and Hawaii in 1957, Oregon in 1964, Iowa, Vermont, and West Virginia in 1965, and New York in 1966(Henry B1). However, since the complete abolition of the death penalty could never be achieved, reformers concentrated on limiting the scope on capital punishment. The death penalty was most commonly applied to murder and treason, but no executions under state authority have occurred for the latter offense in the modern period. Other offenses to which the death penalty has been attached by some American jurisdictions include forcible rape, kidnapping, armed robbery, certain narcotics crimes, and (in the case of the federal government) espionage and the theft of military secrets (Draper 68).
             Next, a landmark decision was made, in 1794, in Pennsylvania. They adopted a law to distinguish the degrees of murder and only used the death penalty for premeditated first-degree murder (Guilmette 3). Another landmark decision took place in 1846 in Louisiana. This state abolished the mandatory death sentence and authorized the option of sentencing a capital offender to life imprisonment rather than to death (McCuen and Baumgart 90). After the 1830s, public executions ...