Capital Punishment
Essay by 24 • August 21, 2010 • 688 Words (3 Pages) • 2,341 Views
Each year there about 250 people added to death row and only 35 of them are
even executed. The death penalty is the harshest form of punishment actually enforced by
the United States government. Once the jury has convicted a criminal offense they go to
the second part of the trial, the punishment part. If then the jury considers the death
penalty, then the judge agrees that the criminal will have to face a form of execution.
Lethal injection is the most widely used by today's
death row criminals. For a period
between 1972 to '76, capital punishment was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme
Court. There are many reasons for why they thought that. The death penalty was looked
at a cruel and unusual punishment under the eighth amendment. This decision was
switched when a new method of execution was formed. Capital punishment is a difficult
issue and there are many opinions as there are people on this earth.
Since the beginning of the United States there has been over 13,000 legal
executions. Texas has executed the most people since the death penalty has been
reinstated in 1976. There are only about 30-60 prisoners killed yearly. "The Bible requires
the death penalty for a wide variety of crimes, including sex before marriage, adultery,
homosexual behavior, doing work on Saturday, and murder. It even calls for some
criminals to be tortured to death by burning them alive"(SOURCE 1). Some of the things
stated in the last quote were a little morbid, and made me question in what I truly believe
in. John Stuart Mill once stated, " When there has been brought home to any one, by
conclusive evidence, the greatest crime known to law; and when the attendant
circumstances suggest no palliation of guilt, no hope that the culprit may even yet not be
unworthy to live among mankind, nothing to make it probable that the crime was an
exception to general character rather than a consequence of it, then I confess it appears to
me that to deprive the criminal of the life which he has proved himself to be
unworthy--solemnly to blot him out from the fellowship of mankind and from the
catalogue of the living-- is the most appropriate as it is certainly the most impressive,
mode in which society can attach to so great a crime the penal consequences which for the
security of life it is indispensable to annex to it", this was stated before Parliament on April
21, 1868. I find that in this passage a lot of good is said. How can you not agree with
what he said.
In 1994 there were 2,850 persons awaiting execution. Yet like stated before only
30-60 are executed yearly. This is ridiculously low number compared to 199 persons
executed
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