Capital Punishment is Cruel And Unusual Essay

that offenders will not commit these crimes again. The United States should use the death penalty because it is economical and continues to be a deterrent for potential offenders.

We kill people to show them killing is wrong. The death penalty does not punish people for killing but for murdering someone. Murder is "the unlawful, malicious, or permitted killing of one human being by another" (Carmical 1). The slogan should be ?We execute people to show people that murder is wrong.? The death penalty is racist, it punishes the poor, it causes the innocent to die, it is not a deterrent against violent crime, and it is cruel and unusual punishment. The death penalty is wrong and it should be abolished.

The death penalty also known as capital punishment is an execution in which the person who committed the offence is put to death by the state. It was first practiced in Jamestown colony, 1608. The person was hanged for spying for the Spanish government and was the 1st person sentenced to death in America. Since then, it has been a form to punish the criminals for committing such heinous crimes and putting end to violence and crime rates. Despite how people agree that the death penalty is justifiable, however; it still violates the international human rights laws. These laws were created to protect the lives of all human beings including the criminals, who some might agree they do not deserve to live. Even though some might say that the

“Everyone who commits a crime is not committing a compulsive act” (Wasserstrom 573) and therefore, we should not act impulsively towards them. The punishment should not be grossly out of proportion to the severity of the crime charged, nor should it violate the convicted individual’s dignity.      Lastly, there is the aspect of my religion (Catholic) playing a factor in the capital punishment debate. Many people point to the passage in Leviticus, which states that an eye for an eye is God's decree (Costanzo 592).

Capital Punishment is an issue that has been argued over from the dinner table in

Capital punishment and the practice of the death penalty is an issue that is passionately debated in the United States. Opponents of the death penalty claim that capital punishment is unnecessary since a life sentence accomplishes the same objective. What death penalty opponents neglect to tell you is that convicted murders and child rapists escape from prison every year(List of prison escapes, 2015). As I write this essay, police are searching for two convicted murders who escaped from the Clinton Correctional Facility in New York on June 6th, 2015. The ONLY punishment from which one cannot escape is capital punishment.

(Death Row on Trial 2001: video) Religiously, the death penalty can also be morally justified because the Bible states “an eye for an eye” (Exodus 21:23-27) which can be interpreted as a life for a life.

The complaints that were brought up were that confinement in cells in the isolation unit of the Farm amounts to cruel and unusual punishment as prohibited by the eighth amendment. They were also denied adequate medical attention, and that penitentiary authorities have failed to take adequate steps to protect inmates from assaults by other inmates. They also say that the Farm is depriving them of their fourteenth amendment rights. The court defines cruel and unusual punishment as such: a flexible and expanding one, and that punishment or system of punishment is unconstitutional if it offends concepts of decency and human dignity and precepts of civilization which Americans profess to possess, or if it is disproportionate to the offense, or if it violates fundamental standards of good conscience and fairness. They needed to show that the prison authorities had “abandoned elemental concepts of decency by permitting conditions to prevail of a shocking and debased

Although our nation has gotten away from it in recent years, we were founded by those who had strong religious beliefs. On this note there are several passages in the bible that speak of letting the punishment fit the crime, hence making the victim whole again. Take, for example, Leviticus 24:19-23. This passage implicitly reads as follows: “19Anyone who maims another shall suffer the same injury in return: 20fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; the injury inflicted is the injury to be suffered. 21One who kills an animal shall make restitution for it; but one who kills a human being shall be put to death.” The principle here is making the victim whole. We must remember that when the circumstances warrant capital punishment the details of the crime are usually tremendously heinous. That being said sometimes capital punishment is the only fair and equitable punishment.

Perhaps most importantly, one must consider the basic ethical question of hypocrisy. We must ask ourselves, "What type of message are we as a nation sending to the rest of the world and to our own citizens when we kill people who kill people to show that it is wrong to kill people?" By executing murderers, we are merely lowering ourselves to their level in order to express our primitive desire for retribution. Our society can never be called moral or democratic if we begin sacrificing individuals, without their consent, to 'the greater good.' Since capital punishment is supposedly intended to protect and avenge innocent lives, it has failed its purpose if, as it undoubtedly has and will, it causes even a few blameless people to be killed. The

Does taking another’s life actually avenge that of another? The disciplinary act of capital punishment, punishment through death, has been a major debate in the United States for years. Those in support of capital punishment believe that it is an end to the reoccurrence of a repeat murderer. The public has, for many years, been in favor of this few and pro-death penalty. Yet as time goes on, records show a decrease in the public and the state’s support of the continuation of capital punishment. Those against capital punishment believe it is an immoral, spends taxpayers’ money improperly, and does not enforce a way to rehabilitate criminals and/or warn off future crimes.

Should one person have the right to end another human's life? It is a question most people have the answer for when it comes to capital punishment. Capital punishment is known to some people one of the cruelest punishment to humanity. Some people believe giving a person the death penalty doe's not solve anything. While other's believe it is payback to the criminal for the crime they have committed. There have been 13,000 people executed since the colonial times, among 1900 and 1985 there were 139 innocent people sentence to death only 23 were executed. In 1967 lack of support and legal challenges cut the execution rate to zero bringing the practice to a complete end by 1972. Although the supreme court authorized its resumption in 1976

A man sits immobile in a steel chair with a metal cap resting on his bald head. A priest reads selections from the Bible telling him he will go to Heaven if he confesses his sins to God. The man just smiles as the security guard pulls the switch, and one thousand volts of electricity flows through the man's body. His entire frame shakes in convulsions as his head bobs up and down with the shock. In a couple of seconds the man's life is over. The priest prays, makes the sign of the cross on his chest, and, turning slowly, walks out the door. Capital punishment has been around for many years and has spanned many centuries.

     “This is not a nice man … innocent is not a word that suits him in any way,” says Brian Webster when speaking of Matthew Poncelet, the man on death row in the movie Dead Man Walking. Many people feel that the death penalty is immoral and it should not be used; however I feel completely opposite. I believe that capital punishment is a fair sentence for a murderer to receive.

The most severe form of punishment of all legal sentences is that of death. This is referred to as the death penalty, or “capital punishment”; this is the most severe form of corporal punishment, requiring law enforcement officers to actually kill the offender. It has been banned in numerous countries, in the United States, however an earlier move to eliminate capital punishment has now been reversed and more and more states are resorting to capital punishment for such serious offenses namely murder. “Lex talionis”, mentioned by the Bible encourages “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” mentality, and people have been using it regularly for centuries. We use it in reference to burglary, adultery, and various other situations, although,