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215 Chapter 10 The Death Penalty in the North Dino E. Buenviaje T he North’s experience with the death penalty evolved from an unquestioning faith during colonial times that capital punishment was divinely sanctioned, to outright abolition in the twentieth century. Its origins were intertwined with English common law which changed in the years after independence. During the early nineteenth century, Americans in the northern states debated among themselves regarding the utility and morality of capital punishment, and each state would address the death penalty in its own way during the twentieth century. The Colonial Experience The death penalty in the United States has its origins that fall back as early as 1608, when English colonists transplanted English common law to their settlements. Before the creation of the prison system, capital punishment was seen as the only way to deter serious crime, such as murder. Capital punishment fulfilled three objectives in colonial society. The first was deterrence, to prevent crimes from being committed. The second was retribution, the just compensation to society for the damage caused by crime. The third was penitence, by allowing the prisoner to confess his or her crimes, and thus take the final opportunity for eternal salvation. These three motives justified the need for capital punishment.1 The criminal codes of the northern colonies during the early seventeenth century created three categories of crimes: crimes against property , such as theft and arson; crimes against persons , such as murder and rape; and crimes against “morality,” such as blasphemy or sodomy. During the early years of the northern colonies, the punishment for crimes against property was lighter than that in the mother country. For example, in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Plymouth, and Pennsylvania, burglary and robbery were not considered capital crimes. In New York, New Hampshire, and New Haven, they became capital only after the third offense. In the colonies of New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania , arson was not considered a capital crime.2 Each colony had it own trajectory. In the category of crimes against persons, the northern colonies were consistent with England, though still lenient in some aspects. Murder was a capital punishment in all of the colonies, yet manslaughter was not capital in Pennsylvania and western New Jersey. Rape was not capital in the early codes of Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania. Thus, the mid-Atlantic colonies gained the reputation of having the most lenient legal systems in the English-speaking world. 216 Dino E. Buenviaje While the northern colonies were lenient in the categories of crimes against property and the crimes against persons, they were harsher in the category of crimes against morality. Early northern colonies such as Massachusetts Bay were established along religious lines, as the Puritans expressed their goal of building “a city on a hill.” It was a beacon to the world of what a Godly commonwealth should constitute. Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and New York deemed idolatry a capital offense. New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts made adultery a capital offense. Sodomy and bestiality were also capital offense in all of the northern colonies. While these offenses were in the law books, they wererarelyenforced.Duringthemid-­ seventeenth century, the only case of execution for religious beliefs was when four Quakers in Massachusetts were executed, but that was only after they returned after having been banished. The only example of executions for adultery happened in 1643 when James Britton and Mary Latham were hung in Massachusetts. Hangings for other crimes, such as sodomy or bestiality, however, were more regularly witnessed.3 By the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Parliament extended the offenses eligible for capital punishment. These covered mainly crimes against property, such as poaching deer, and pickpocketing. By the second half of the eighteenth century, the English criminal code included two hundred criminal offenses that were eligible for the death penalty, making England’s criminal code the harshest in Europe.4 The colonies followed suit, though in an inconsistent manner. Crimes against property became capital by the eighteenth century. In Massachusetts , robbery became a capital crime after a third conviction in 1642; by 1711 after a second; and after a first in 1761. New Hampshire followed suit in 1682 by reducing the offenses from three to two, and by 1718, to one. Arson became a capital crime in Connecticut and Massachusetts during the second half of the seventeenth century. Of the northern colonies, Pennsylvania held out the longest, with murder as the only capital offense, due to its origins as a...

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