User:Mistercoffee71/Capital punishment

Moratoriums, What Are They?
Moratoriums, in context of the death penalty, is the action of suspending a legal activity like a death sentence due to the potential fact of an appeal process or a governmental pardon on any given level, such as a case going from the trial court to an appellate court to figure out if the lower court made a procedural error or an error on matter of rights. Solely based on this definition alone, it is good to infer that anytime the federal or even certain state courts are dealing with a death penalty case or a crime severe enough that may impose a life without parole sentence, then the governor or president in question can place a stay on the execution or not allow for the life sentence to be the actual final sentence because of an appeal that can play out.

Once upon a time back in 2002 a massive case, Atkins v. Virginia, (2002) was ruled on where adults with certain mental illnesses cannot receive the death by any proper means as it was interpreted by the supreme court of the United States, that executing those with mental illnesses was cruel and unusual under the 8th Amendment. You could say that this would be a starting point to potentially make the death penally unconstitutional across the board.

Proceeding a few years later and maintaining the same topic of the death penalty, in 2005 in the case of Roper v. Simmons (2005), this case involved a juvenile up for the death penalty as they committed a pretty heinous crime,

References:

 * 1) Legal Information Institute (n.d.). Moratorium. Legal Information Institute
 * 2) Atkins v, Virginia (2002). Justia Supreme Court Cases
 * 3) Roper v. Simmons (2005). Justia Supreme Court Cases