The first known execution in the United States was in the colony of Virginia in 1622. By, the 1800's in America the death penalty was required, any person found guilty by a jury for murder charges, and several other serious crimes, was executed. This is when the outcome known as jury nullification was first brought around. Jury nullification is when a jury does not think that a person deserves the death penalty so they find him or her not guilty just so they do not have to be executed even if they believe that the person is guilty. By the early 1900's most states had adopted a new type of capital punishment that let the jury decide if the defendant should be put to death or have a life sentence in prison. Executions were frequent in the United States from from the 1930's till about the 1960's, but the process of the death penalty had began to have many moral and political oppositions.
Today:
States have the right to make the death penalty legal or not. It is also up to individual states to decide what crimes are harsh enough to use the death penalty.
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