Essay:Needed Constitutional Amendments (beneficii)

Death Penalty Abolition

~Article--

Section 1. No person shall be sentenced to death or executed in the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Those subject to a sentence of death under the authority of the United States at the time of the ratification of this article shall have their sentences commuted to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole; provided, nothing in this section shall be construed to preclude the pardoning or commuting of the same prisoners by the President.

Section 3. Those subject to a sentence of death under the authority of a state at the time of the ratification of this article shall have their sentences commuted to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, the laws of the state thereof notwithstanding; provided, nothing in this section shall be construed to preclude the pardoning or commuting of the same prisoners by the executive authority thereof.

Section 4. In each state, those offenses that are capital at the time of the ratification of this article shall carry the option of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, including in existing cases, until the legislature thereof may provide by appropriate legislation for those offenses.

Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce the first and second sections of this article by appropriate legislation.

This makes clear that life without parole will be what people on death row will get when this is ratified. This removes ambiguity about what will happen to people on death row. Also, it sets life without parole as the punishment for offenses that carried death (for those jurisdictions that have the death penalty but no life without parole).