Capital Punishment in Usa

How do you feel about the saying "An eye for an eye?" Do you feel that it is a good saying to run a nation by? Or do you agree with Gandhi

who added to the statement, "Ð'--and everyone is blind?" There have been many controversies in the history of the United States, ranging from abortion to gun control; however, capital punishment has been one of the most widely contested issues in recent decades. Capital Punishment is the execution of a criminal pursuant to a sentence of death imposed by a competent court. It is not intended to inflict any pain or any torture; it is only another form of punishment. This form of punishment is irrevocable because it removes those punished from society permanently, instead of temporarily imprisoning them. This is the best and most effective. Way to deal with criminals. The usual alternative to the death penalty is life-long imprisonment.

Capital punishment is a method of retribution as old a civilization itself. The death penalty has been imposed throughout history for many crimes, ranging from blasphemy and treason to petty theft and murder. Many ancient societies accepted the idea that certain crimes deserved capital punishment. Ancient Roman and Mosaic Law endorsed the notion of retaliation; they believed in the rule, "an eye for an eye." Similarly, the ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, and Greeks all executed citizens for a variety of crimes. The most famous people who were executed were Socrates and Jesus. Only in England, during the reigns of Kin Canute and William the conqueror was the death penalty not used, although the results of interrogation and torture were often fatal. Later, Britain reinstated the death penalty and brought it to its American colonies. Although the death penalty was widely accepted throughout the early United States, not everyone approved of it. In the late-eighteenth century, opposition to the death penalty gathered enough strength to lead to important restrictions on the use of the death penalty in several northern stated, while in the United States, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Rhode Island abandons the practice altogether. In 1794, Pennsylvania adopted a law to distinguish the degrees of murder and only use the death penalty for premeditated first-degree murder. Another reform took place in 1846 in Louisiana. This state abolished the mandatory death penalty and authorized the option of sentencing a capital offender to life imprisonment rather than to death. After the 180s, public executions ceased to be demonstrated but did not completely stop until after 1936. Throughout history, the government has been extremely inventive in devising ways to execute people. Executions inflicted in the past are now regarded today as inhumane, barbaric, and unthinkable and are forbidden by law almost everywhere. Common historical methods of execution included: stoning, crucifixion, burning, breaking on the wheel, drawing and quartering, beheading and decapitation, shooting, and hanging. These types of punishments today are banned by the eighth amendment to the constitution (The Constitution, Amendment 8).

In the United States, the death penalty is currently implemented in one of five ways: firing squad, hanging, gas chamber, electrocution, and lethal injection. These methods of execution compared to those of the past are not meant for torture, but meant for punishment for the crime. For the past decades, capital punishment has been one of the most hotly contested political issues in America.

The fear of death makes people not as anxious to commit a crime. Still, abolitionists believe that fear is little more than an assumption and a naÐ"Їve assumption at that. Abolitionists claim that capital punishment does not change the murderer's mind from killing or killing again. They base most of their argument against that fear on statistics. Abolitionists are people who favor the abolition of any law or practice deemed harmful to society. States that use capital punishment extensively show a higher murder rate than those that have done away with the death penalty. Also, states that have abolished the death penalty, and then reinstate it show no significant change in murder rate. They say adjacent states with the death penalty and those without show no long-term differences in he number of murders that occur in that state. Finally, there have been no records of change in the rate of homicides in any given city or state following a local execution. Any possibility of changing the mind of a would-be murderer from killing has little effect. Most people that are for the practicing of capital punishment argue that none of the statistical evidence proves that capital punishment does not render the potential criminals.

Incapacitation is another controversial aspect of the death penalty. Abolitionists say condemning a person to death removes any possibility of rehabilitation. They are confident in the life-sentence presenting the possibility of rehabilitating the convict; however, rehabilitation is a myth. The state does not know how to rehabilitate people because there are plenty of convicted murderers who kill again and again. Some of these murderers escape and kill again, or they kill while still inside the prison. While reading different articles both on the internet and in magazines, I came across many stories of inmates who kill another inmate for a piece of chicken. How pathetic is this "rehabilitation" system? The life sentence is also a myth because of overcrowding in prisons, early parole has released convicted murderers, and they still continue to kill. Incapacitation is not solely meant as prevention, but it is meant to maximize public safety by removing any possibility of a convicted murderer to murder again.

Capital punishment saves lives as well as takes them. We must accept the few risks of wrongful deaths for sake of defending public safety. Abolitionists say the cost of execution has become increasingly expensive and that life sentences are more economical. A study of the Texas Criminal System estimated the cost of appealing capital murder at approximately $3.2 million. The high cost includes $265,640 for the trial; $294,240 for the state appeals; $133,608 for federal appeals (over six years); and $135,875 for death row housing. In contrast, the cost of housing a prisoner in a Texas maximum-security prison single cell for 40 years is estimated at $535,000 (TheElectricChair.com). This is a huge amount of taxpayer money, but the public looks at it as an investment in safety since these murderers will never kill again. Retentionists argue that these high costs are due to the lengthy time and the high expenses result from innumerable appeals, many over technicalities which have little or nothing to do with the question of guilt or innocence, and do little more than jam up the nation's