Identify the three reasons behind the decrease in the use of the death penalty in Texas, and explain why each change has occurred.
What will be an ideal response?
The ideal answer should include:
1. In Roper v. Simmons (2005), the U.S. Supreme Court held that persons who were 17 years old or younger at the time the capital crime was committed could not be executed. In Texas, several death row inmates were transferred to the general population because of this ruling.
2. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could not execute persons with intellectual disabilities on the basis that doing so violated the Eighth Amendment's protection against cruel and unusual punishment. Consequently, the death sentences of 28 death row inmates with intellectual disabilities were commuted to life in prison.
3. Jurors who had sentenced individuals to death were troubled by the requirement that they choose either the death penalty or sentencing the person to live with the chance for parole after 40 years. Jurors said they chose the death penalty in order to keep an offender from ever being free again. Because of a change in legislation, juries can now choose a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
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To qualify as a multicandidate committee, a PAC must raise money from at least 50 people and contribute to at least ______ candidates.
A. 3 B. 5 C. 7 D. 9
The opportunity for the president to appoint members to the federal judiciary is valuable for which of the following reasons?
A. New justices help move long-term justices closer to mandatory retirement. B. A majority of presidents have been able to make more than five appointments to the bench while in office. C. Rulings related to redistricting and election laws will be altered to favor the president's political party. D. The Court is able to move swiftly to begin ruling in favor of the president's ideology. E. The political views of the president will continue to be institutionalized long after they have left the White House.
In recent years, which of the following are signs that Russia is becoming more authoritarian?
a. President Putin has waged a campaign against many of Russia’s businessmen, some conducting business with questionable practices but others totally legitimate. b. In 2013, President Putin dissolved the state news agency, RIA Novasti, and created a new state-run agency to promote Moscow’s image abroad. c. Russia has put enormous pressure on some of its former republics, threatening to withhold trade or natural gas and, in the case of Ukraine, seizing the Crimean Peninsula. d. All of the above
How did the Convention on Genocidecome about?
a. because of publicity about massacres during the Vietnam War b. because of publicity about massacres during the Bosnian War c. as a reaction to the use of chemical warfare in World War I d. as a reaction to the mass killings during World War II