The Death Penalty Is Justified And Ethical

In the present day of America the death penalty has diminished greatly in its use to a point where it is almost never used in most states and most other countries accept a select bunch, have also adhered to this same philosophy. (deathpenaltyinfo.org)

Burnett, Cathleen. "Political and societal views on the death penalty." Human Quest. 01 Mar. 2003: 9. eLibrary. Web. 20 Jan. 2012.

Each county was responsible to carry out executions on their own until in 1923, when the state implemented a law saying executions should be done through electrocutions in Huntsville (Champagne). This violated the Eighth Amendment because the criminals felt the pain of being electrocuted. As a result, in 1977, the state required that lethal injection be the sole method of execution in Texas (Champagne). Although the lethal injection was to be painless and that it was created for the benefit of the criminal, it still violates The Eighth Amendment because it is inhumane. The crime done by the prison cannot be justified by taking the prisoner’s life. Capital punishment takes the like of a person, and what can be taken can never be taken back anymore. In 2011, the drug they used in the lethal injection had to be changed from sodium thiopental to pentobarbital because of the international attention and protestations it received in the United States (Champagne). The issues concerning pentobarbital as part of the three-drug cocktail in the lethal injection arose when officials did not want to say the source where they are getting their pentobarbital from (Dart). When Texas had to execute a man this April using new batches of pentobarbital, protestors claimed that because of the source’s lack of authenticity, it was possible that “an excessively painful execution”

On April 29, 2014, Oklahoma execution Clayton Lockett using a three-drug lethal injection procedure. The procedure went poorly; Lockett awoke after the injection of the drugs that were supposed to render him unconscious and did not die until about 40 minutes later. Oklahoma suspended all subsequent executions until the incident could be be investigated and subsequently adopted a new protocol that place higher emphasis on making sure the injection was done properly. The new protocol is also allowed for four alternative drug combinations, one of which used midazolam as the initial drug, as the did the the protocol used in the Lockett execution.

Inmates in Oklahoma State Penitentiary, located in McAlester, Oklahoma, sued state officials after the botched execution of Clayton Lockett on April 29, 2014 led to Lockett laying in agonizing pain for 40 minutes after receiving the lethal injection cocktail, waiting for his heart attack to kill him (Konrad, Web). Richard E. Glossip and the other death row inmates petition the Court, believing that the use of midazolam as the initial drug of execution violated the Eight Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment (S. Ct, p.1). The Supreme Court of the United States of America denied the motion in a 5-4 ruling, stating prisoners “failed to establish a likelihood of success on the merits of their claim that the

Carl Shaw was convicted for assisting in the murders of two teenagers, he was a Military Police at Ft. Jackson South Carolina; he was given the death penalty. Shaw was proven to have mental health issues and at the time was on an illegal drug, PCP, his last words was (“Killing was wrong when I did it, It is wrong when you do it”). Another example used by Bruck, Alvin Ford, convicted of killing a cop, he has been on death row for years and during that time has lost his mind, he now spends his days rocking back and forth, and muttering unintelligible

Long tubes connect the needle through a hole in a cement block wall to several intravenous drips. The first is a harmless saline solution that is started immediately. Then, at the warden 's signal, a curtain is raised exposing the inmate to the witnesses in an adjoining room. Then, the inmate is injected with sodium thiopental - an anesthetic, which puts the inmate to sleep. Next flows pavulon or pancuronium bromide, which paralyzes the entire muscle system and stops the inmate 's breathing. Finally, the flow of potassium chloride stops the heart. Death results from anesthetic overdose and respiratory and cardiac arrest while the condemned person is unconscious. (Ecenbarger, 1994 and Weisberg, 1991) Medical ethics preclude doctors from participating in executions. However, a doctor will certify the inmate is dead.” Lethal injection is a more humane way of executing someone, as opposed to electrocution.

The process of lethal injection that has always been used in the United States is that Sodium Thiopental is first put into the patient to put the inmate to sleep and then pancuronium bromide is used to paralyze muscle function and to stop the inmate’s breathing and finally potassium chloride is used to stop the inmate’s heart. They typically use this method of 3 different drugs so that if someone is allergic to one of the ingredients of one of the drugs that they can easily switch one of the drugs out for a drug without the ingredient that they are allergic to that serves the same purpose. Though this method has been used for over 30 years recent research has found that sometimes the anesthesia does not come into effect and many times the inmate is sitting there convulsing and feeling extreme pain and possibly experiencing asphyxiation, burning sensations. According

The process of lethal injection that has always been used in the United States is that Sodium Thiopental is first put into the patient to put the inmate to sleep and then pancuronium bromide is used to paralyze muscle function and to stop the inmate’s breathing and finally potassium chloride is used to stop the inmate’s heart. They typically use this method of 3 different drugs so that if someone is allergic to one of the ingredients of one of the drugs that they can easily switch one of the drugs out for a drug without the ingredient that they are allergic to that serves the same purpose. Though this method has been used for over 30 years recent research has found that sometimes the anesthesia does not come into effect and many times the inmate is sitting there convulsing and feeling extreme pain and possibly experiencing asphyxiation, burning sensations. According

All-in-all, the death penalty is a worldwide controversy. From time to time the death penalty has changed and changed again. From being hung, to electrocution, to lethal injection, the death penalty has always been a cruel and unusual punishment for criminals everywhere. The death penalty has also always been an option for those to do harm to others yet it has made the world safer by no accidents to prisoners who

If everything was done correctly, the execution would be finished in a matter of seconds. Unfortunately, that was not usually the case, and the deaths were slow and painful. The end results of a hanging consisted of the eyes popping out of their sockets, protruding tongue, bloated face, defecation, and severe jerking of the body and appendages (Descriptions”).

The execution team then starts to put a needle in a femoral vein near the groin area and this is a very painful procedure. The drug that was inserted was a sedative to make Lockett go unconscious which took 10 minutes, this was an abnormally long time for the drugs to take effect. After that then they administered the other 2 drugs, one was to paralyze his muscles and the other to stop his heart. This was when they noticed something wrong, Lockett started to writhe uncontrollably from his straps, after that it took at least 45 minutes before he suffered a heart attack and died.

An Impassioned Debate: An overview of the death penalty in America depicts the facts about the eighth amendment. The eighth amendment is the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments (Masci 1). There are two significant cases that have inflamed the debate over the capital punishment, The Baze v. Reese case, and the Kennedy v. Louisiana case. The first case reveals the strong debate that the execution by lethal injection is inhuman and in violation of the eight amendment. The second case inflamed the

Capital Punishment was adopted by America when the state of Virginia carried out the colonies’ first execution in 1608 (“History of the Death Penalty”). Since then, usage of the death penalty has been instituted by 36 states, making execution the ultimate form of punishment. Although in theory the death penalty seems like a viable method of punishment, in practice, it has serious flaws that damage the integrity of the state. Capital Punishment has been falsely idolized as a deterrent, applied unfairly for generations, used as a vehicle for revenge, and made people blind to the fact that life in prison without parole is an equally acceptable form of punishment. The death penalty is an

Since the foundation of our nation the Death Penalty has been a way to punish prisoners that have committed heinous crimes, however since the turn of the 20th century the practice of Capital Punishment has been questioned on its usage in America and the world as a whole. The Death Penalty is used in America to punish criminals who have committed murders, or taken the life of an innocent person, and while the death penalty seems like it is doing justice to those who have killed others it is actually being used improperly in most situations, while also hindering our economy and is a means of ending more lives than necessary. The Death Penalty can be a valid source of punishment for criminals in the US however due to the misuse of this power by the government it is a huge detriment to our nation and the people that inhabit it. Because of the fact that Capital Punishment is used unfairly, and ineffectively in our nation it is an obsolete form of punishment and should have no place in the United States justice department.