Capital Punishment.The Death Penalty.

Lesson Objective: To understand what capital punishment is and why people disagree over the issue. To decide what your opinion is.

PRO DEATH PENALTY - YouTube

The ultimate punishment...The ultimate punishment is capital punishment or as it also know the death penalty. Although this form of punishment is no longer used in Britain, it is still carried out in many parts of the world.

What is your opinion? Write down your response on the post it in front of you.

Who has the death penalty?

South Korea Nigeria

Ghana Rwanda Iran Uganda

United States France

Egypt

Yes: No: United States United KingdomEgypt RwandaNigeria FranceIran South KoreaUganda Ghana

United States Capital Punishment:

38 states in USA have the death penalty

States with NO DEATH PENALTY (Alaska,District of Columbia, Hawaii, Iowa,

Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin)

Death row in America.

1. If you kill a police officer/ jail warden

2. Murder whilst kidnapping, burglary, robbery, aggravated sexual assault, arson.

3. Murder during prison escape

4.Murder by a state prison inmate who is serving a life sentence for any of five offences

5.Multiple murders (serial killers)

6. Murder of an individual under six years of age

Death Penalty in the UK…

• James Hanratty was one of the last people to be hanged in England – for the murder of a man and the raping and shooting of his lover.

• Many people think that Hanratty was innocent and so feel that the death sentence can never be justified.

• The death penalty was finally abolished in England, Scotland and Wales in 1969 and in Northern Ireland in 1973.

• Parliament still debates whether to bring back the death penalty (it has voted four times since 1970)..

The last woman...1955: Ruth Ellis hanged for killing lover

“Convicted murderer Ruth Ellis has been hanged at Holloway Prison,

London.

Ellis was sentenced to death at the Old Bailey for shooting her lover, 25-year-old racing driver David Blakely, outside

the Magdala public house in north London on Easter Sunday.

Home Secretary Major Lloyd George rejected the final appeals to reprieve

the 28-year-old former model and nightclub hostess last night.”

Ruth Ellis.The trial and punishment of Ruth Ellis became notorious as she was the last

woman in England to be executed. Ruth Ellis' family campaigned for her murder conviction to be reduced to manslaughter on the grounds of provocation. Through the Criminal Cases

Review Commission they brought the case to the Court of Appeal in September 2003.

They argued Ellis was suffering "battered woman syndrome". She had suffered a miscarriage just 10 days before the killing after David Blakely had

punched her in the stomach. But the appeal judges ruled she had been properly convicted of murder according to the law as it stood at the time. The defence of diminished

responsibility did not then exist.

Arguments for and against the death penalty.

You tube clips.Card sort.Case studies.

Jeremy Irons talks about the death penalty – YouTube

Pro-Death Penalty - YouTube

Finally…

Think about what you wrote on your post-it note at the beginning of the lesson.

Has YOUR view on capital punishment changed?Why?