Anti-Death Penalty
History:
The death penalty is not a new idea in our world. Its origins date back 3,700 years to the Babylonian civilization, where it was prescribed for a variety of crimes (Kronenwetter p.10). It was also greatly used in the Greek and Roman empires. In ancient Roman and Mosaic Law they believed in the rule of “eye for and eye.” The most famous executions of the past included Socrates and Jesus (Wilson p.13). It continued into England during the Middle Ages and then to the American colonies where it exist still today. In the colonies, death was a punishment for crimes of murder, arson, and perjury. Although today the death penalty is used for murder.
Common ways of execution in the past where stoning, crucifixion, burning, breaking of the wheel, draw and quartering, beheading, garroting, shooting, and hanging (Wilson p.89). Today these styles of execution are thought to be cruel and unusual. Today in the United States, the death penalty is used in five different ways. These five ways are the firing squad, hanging, gas chamber, electric chair, and lethal injection. The United States applies these styles of execution because they are thought to be not torturous for execution.
The death penalty has been accepted in the United States, but was not always approved by the people. In the late eighteen hundreds there was enough attention gathered to the death penalty to lead to restrictions. Many northern states abolished the practice all together like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Rhode Island (Wilson p.45). Pennsylvania in 1794 decided to revises its laws on the death penalty. The state decided to use the penalty mainly for first-degree murder. Around this time many states where deciding t...
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Wilson, Josh, M. “Death Penalty History”. New York: Fletcher Press. 1998
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Koch, Larry Wayne, John F Galliher, and Colin Wark, The Death of the American Death Penalty : States Still Leading the Way. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2012, Ebscohost Ebook.
Colson, Charles W. “Capital Punishment.” The Rutherford Institute. 11 Nov. 2002. 30 May 2010 .
All through the history of our country, we have sentenced people to death as the last form of punishment for grave crimes. Even before our founding fathers wrote the constitution and its amendments, the colonies had public executions. Capital punishment
Unfortunately, this is not a scene in a horror flick; these are the surroundings of an actual prison execution. As early as the founding of the United States, capital punishment has been a controversial and hotly debated public issue. The three most common forms of death penalties currently used in the United States are the gas chamber, electrocution, and lethal injection. The firing squad is an option in Idaho, Oklahoma, and Utah; and death by hanging still remains an option in New Hampshire and Washington state.
Van Den Haag, Ernest and John Conrad. The Death Penalty: A Debate. New York: Plenum Press, 1983.
“The Death Penalty in America: A Cultural and Historical Analysis.” Supreme Court Debates (2004): pp. 259-288.
Mappes, Thomas A., Jane S. Zembaty, and David DeGrazia. "The Death Penalty." Social Ethics: Morality and Social Policy. 8th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012. 105-53. Print.
The death penalty, created in the Eighteen Century B.C by King Hammurabi of Babylon, was a way to punish those who went against the laws and committed crimes. Back in the B.C. era and all the way until the late Tenth Century the methods of the death penalty were being crucified, beaten to death, burned alive, and drowned. The methods of execution died down in the Tenth Century, the execution methods became less heinous and over the top. Hanging became the most used method of execution, but that soon changed in the Sixteenth Century. Henry VIII of Britain brought back all the horrible and gruesome methods of execution and also implementing more ghastly methods. Over 72,000 people were executed either by being boiled to death, burned at the stake, hanged, beheaded, and drawing and quartering. Drawing and quartering is where the accused is tied to a horse and dragged to the gallows where he is hung by the neck for a...
“The case Against the Death Penalty.” aclu.org. American Civil Liberties Union, 2012. Web. 12 Feb. 2013
The death penalty, capital punishment, in the words of the Oxford English Dictionary is the legally authorized execution of an individual as discipline for a crime (“Death Penalty”). Exactly one hundred and sixty-nine years before the establishment of the United States of America, in year 1607, George Kendall was the first to meet his fate to a firing squad in Jamestown, Virginia as retribution for discord, mutiny, and espionage (Green 1). Some four hundred and seven years later, the fate of the death penalty itself has become one rather controversial—in the landmark Supreme Court case Furman v. Georgia (1972), the implementation of absolute justice was ruled unconstitutional; yet a mere four years later, this decision was overruled. One thousand
The death penalty has been around since the time of Jesus Christ. Executions have been recorded from the 1600s to present times. From about 1620, the executions by year increased in the US. It has been a steady increase up until the 1930s; later the death penalty dropped to zero in the 1970s and then again rose steadily. US citizens said that the death penalty was unconstitutional because it was believed that it was "cruel and unusual" punishment (Amnesty International). In the 1970s, the executions by year dropped between zero and one then started to rise again in the 1980s. In the year 2000, there were nearly one hundred executions in the US (News Batch). On June 29, 1972, the death penalty was suspended because the existing laws were no longer convincing. However, four years after this occurred, several cases came about in Georgia, Florida, and Texas where lawyers wanted the death penalty. This set new laws in these states and later the Supreme Court decided that the death penalty was constitutional under the Eighth Amendment (Amnesty International).
Pasquerella, Lynn. “The Death Penalty in the United States.” The Study Circle Resource Center of Topsfield Foundation. July 1991. Topsfield Foundation. 03 Feb 2011. Web.
The death penalty is a highly controversial issue, it is beyond doubt, because it related to live. Victims achieve ‘Retribution’ from death penalty, as a response to social injustice. There are many years of history used of death penalty, starting from the first death penalty law established in “Eighteenth Century B.C. in the Code of King Hammurabi of Babylon” (Introduction), which people often say ‘an eye for an eye’. This means the punishment must match the crime, if you kill someone, then you should pay back with life. The death penalty in America was under the influence by Britain when “settlers came to the new world, they brought the practice of capital punishment” (Introduction). Since then, death penalty become a significant
To start off, I will discuss the history of the death penalty. The first established death penalty laws date as far back as the Eighteenth Century B.C. in the code of King Hammaurabi of Babylon, which codified the death penalty for 25 different crimes. Death sentences were carried out by such means as crucifixion, boiling, beheading, drowning, beating to death, burning alive, and impalement.
Fein, Bruce. "Individual Rights and Responsibility - The Death Penalty, But Sparingly." Speech. American Bar Association. Feb. 2003. Web. 20 Nov. 2013.