Capital Punishment`s Cost 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 that statement, "--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 hotly 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 physical 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 retributive punishment as old as 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 of "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 (Saunders 462) and Jesus.Only in England, during the reigns of King Canute (1016-1035; Hoyt 151) and William the Conqueror (1066-1087; Miller 259) 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 states, while in the United States, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Rhode Island abandoned 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 1830s, public executions ceased to be demonstrated but did not completely stop until after 1936. Throughout history, governments have been extremely inventive in devising ways to execute people. Executions inflicted in the past are now regarded today as ghastly, 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.This debate is a complicated one.
Capital punishment is a legal, practical, philosophical, social, political, and moral question. The notion of deterrence has been at the very center of the practical debate over the question of capital punishment. Most of us assume that we execute murderers primarily because we believe it will discourage others from becoming murderers. Retentionists have long asserted the deterrent power of capital punishment as an obvious fact. The fear of death deters people from committing crimes. Still, abolitionists believe that deterrence is little more than an assumption and a naive assumption at that.
Abolitionists claim that capital punishment does not deter murderers from killing or killing again. They base most of their argument against deterrence on statistics. States that use capital punishment extensively show a higher murder rate than those that have abolished the death penalty. Also, states that have abolished the death penalty and then reinstated 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 the number of murders that occur in that state.And finally, there has been no record of change in the rate of homicides in a given city or state following a local execution. Any possibility of deterring a would-be murderer from killing has little effect. Most Retentionists argue that none of the statistical evidence proves that capital punishment does not deter potential criminals. There is absolutely no way to prove, with any certainty, how many would-be murderers were in fact deterred form killing due to the death penalty. They point out that the murder rate in any given state depends on many things besides whether or not that state uses capital punishment.
They cite such factors as the proportion of urban residents in the state, the level of economic prosperity, and the social and racial makeup of the populous. But a small minority is willing to believe in these statistics and to abandon the deterrence argument.But they defend the death penalty base on other arguments, relying primarily on the need to protect society from killers who are considered high risk for killing again. 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 in 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 deterrence but it is meant to maximize public safety by removing any possibility of a convicted murderer to murder again.
The issue of execution of an innocent person is troubling to both abolitionists and Retentionists alike. Some people are frightened of this possibility enough to be convinced that capital punishment should be abolished. This is not true at all! The execution of innocent people is very rare because there are many safeguards guaranteeing protection of the rights of tho ...
