Capital Punishment 10 Essay Research Paper Debating

Capital Punishment 10 Essay, Research Paper

Debating Capital Punishment

Murder. The helmeted man sits immobile, strapped and bolted into the enforced chair. The switch is closed. One thousand volts of electricity surge into his delicate flesh, searing his nervous system. The man, despite his shackles, jerks. His head bobs and shakes. Gurgling rises from his throat. After a minute the current is switched off, ten seconds later a surge of deadly volts slam his ruined body back into the chair. Smoke begins to rise from the helmet. A foul, gruesome smell of frying meat and voided bowels fill the room. This time the current stays on for what seems like days. When it is turned off, the question is asked. Is capital punishment the answer for the criminals of today’s society.

Capital punishment is defined as the legal infliction of the death penalty. Today, in modern law, the death penalty is corporal punishment in its most severe form. The word “capital” in “capital punishment” refers to a person’s head (Flanders 2). In the past, people were often executed by chopping off their head. Capital punishment has been part of criminal justice systems since the earliest of times. The Babylonian Hammurabi Code, created in 1700 B.C., decreeded the death penalty for crimes as minor as the illegal sale of beer. The following millenium, Egyptians were put to death for disclosing the location of burial sites (Flanders, 11). In recent times, the death penalty is used mainly for the crime of murder. Is capital punishment a correct way of dealing with the criminals of today s society. There is no right or wrong answer to this question. People all over the world have many different views about capital punishment, some opposing and some encouraging it. Many people are undecided when it comes to this issue, especially since the topic is extremely intense.

Not until the end of the 18th century, were efforts made to abolish the death penalty. Quakers led this movement in England and America. Encouraged by the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, England repealed all but a few of its capital statutes during the 19th century. Many states in the United States, led by Michigan in 1847, abolished the death penalty entirely. However, since complete abolition could never be achieved, reformers concentrated on limiting the scope of capital punishment (Sherwin 63). After the 1830s, public executions ceased to become demonstrated but did not completely stop until after 1936 (Cavanaugh 11-13). The methods of execution have changed over the ages. The death penalty he been inflicted in many ways now regarded today as barbaric and forbidden by law almost everywhere. Some of the ways which it was inflicted in the past were crucifixion, boiling in oil, drawing and quartering, impalement, beheading, burning alive, crushing, tearing, stoning, and drowning. (Kronenwetter 44). These types of punishment today are considered cruel and unusual punishment. In the United States, the death penalty is currently authorized in one of five ways: hanging, electrocution, the gas chamber, firing squad, or lethal injection (Bright and Keenan, 13-15).

Some questions that arise in the controversial issue of capital punishment are, if it is a deterrent for crime or is it more effective than life imprisonment. Defenders of the death penalty insist that since taking an offender’s life is a more severe punishment than any prison term, it must be a better deterrent. Public opinion in America supports the death penalty by a more than two to one margin and this view rest largely on the deterrence of crime from this severe punishment. (Long 22). An example of these statistics comes from the state of Florida from 1992. When asked simply whether they favor the death penalty, 80 percent of Floridians said they did (Cavanaugh 37).

Those who argue against the death penalty as a deterrent to crime say that deterrence is an argument often cited to justify the death penalty. The threat of execution at a future date does not enter the minds of killers. Many of these criminals are acting under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol, in the grip of fear or rage, panicking while committing another crime, or simply lacking an understanding of the gravity of their crime. No credible study yet has produced any solid scientific evidence that the death penalty deters violent crime (Cavanaugh 80-84). According to FBI statistics, the murder rate in some states, which use the death penalty, is twice that of some states, which do not use the death penalty (Flanders 13). Between 1976 and 1985, almost twice as many law enforcement officers were killed in death penalty states as were killed in states that do not execute (15). A Department of Public Law study conducted in Nigeria concluded that ” no efficacy can be shown for the operation of the death penalty” in cases of either murder of armed robbery (21). Also, the 1988 Report to the United Nations Committee on Crime Prevention and Control, a detailed international study, found that all its documented research “has failed to provide scientific proof that executions have a greater deterrent effect than life imprisonment( 25). The current prevailing view among criminologists is that no conclusive evidence exists to show that death, as punishment is a more effective deterrent to violent criminal activity than life-long imprisonment (Long 53).

Many moral concerns are brought up by t