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Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right? Essay

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Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right?

David Todd Eng. 102 Arnett Essay #5

The question of whether capital punishment is right or wrong is a truly tough choice to make. Capital punishment (death penalty) is legal because the government of the United States of America says that it is all right to execute another human being if their crimes are not punishable by other means. There are many different forms of capital punishment. Some of the most popular ones have been hanging, firing squad, electrocution (the chair), the gas chamber, and the newest lethal injection. In the readings of George Orwell, Edward I. Koch, and Jacob Weisberg, there are incites to capital punishment that are not usually thought of or expressed …show more content…

In
Weisburg's "This Is Your Death," the reader must take into account that most of the public is immune to seeing violence on the TV and that broadcasting executions live would just be another form of entertainment. Weisberg writes also about the inhumane and cruel death penalties we have devised to kill criminals. Weisberg tells of the pain and suffering of the prisoners that goes on during an execution. Even if one was watching, one may not always be able to see what is really going on. Weisberg goes into a deep explanation of the many death penalties. Upon reading, one may be shocked as to what really goes on in an execution. For example, the gas chamber kills people by hypoxia. Hypoxia means "the cut-off of oxygen to the brain." One can't understand the pain they are feeling unless one has suffered a heart attack which has many of the same sensations. Weisberg explains that "all methods of execution can be botched."
If an execution were to be botched, then that would only mean more pain and suffering for the one being executed. Weisberg states that "electrocutions go wrong frequently and dramatically." An example is while a prisoner was being electrocuted, the voltage had been lowered to 100 volts because of a synthetic sponge. At a 100 volts one's body is simply tortured until death. This might seem to come under cruel punishments. Another opinion on capital punishment is conveyed by Edward I. Koch.

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