Comment & Debate
Robert Grant, Georgetown Professor. “Capital punishment and violence”. The Humanist. Jan/Feb. 2004 – “The [1973 Gregg v. Georgia] decision was reached on the following two bases. First, the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution expressly recognizes and, to that extent, authorizes the death penalty when it states, ‘No person shall … be deprived of life … without due process of law.’ This is because, by implication, a person may indeed be deprived of life with due process of law.” The implication of this all is that US law explicitly states that sufficient due process can precede capital punishment, making capital punishment constitutional if all legal avenues have been exercised. This does not necessarily prove that capital punishment can involve a sufficient amount of due process (it is possible that itcan’t), but it does appear to demonstrate that the United States constitution dictates that a sufficient amount of due process can precede capital punishment.