The Death Penalty or Capital Punishment

1800 Words4 Pages

While capital punishment may never be the most pressing issue in our hectic, day-to-day lives, it merits our attention nevertheless because of what it symbolizes-institutionalized violence. Just as people without cancer or HIV should care about what the government is doing to help find a cure for AIDS and other deadly diseases, we should all pay attention to what our government is doing in our names. For when a government executes someone, it sends the ill-conceived message that the use of violence against already incarcerated individuals is acceptable. (Bessler, John D.)
The death penalty and capital punishment as a whole has existed for centuries, with the first death penalty laws dating back to the Code of King Hammurabi in Babylon and his “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” philosophy in the Eighteenth Century B.C. (Death Penalty Information Center) The death penalty resurfaced again through the introduction of the Roman Law of the Twelve Tables, and continued to make its way around the world, proliferating in magnitude, until most civilized areas of the world utilized some form of the death penalty in their systems of justice. In early times the executions were not only commonplace, but so widely accepted that they were oftentimes seen as a form of entertainment, as public executions grew in popularity. Well into the nineteenth century, execution crowds still outnumbered crowds gathered for any other purpose. This changed in 1834 when the Quaker state, Pennsylvania, staged the first private hanging, bringing about state mandates that all executions must be held in prison yards with 12 witnesses, at least one doctor, and an attorney general present, leading to nationwide regulations that made for a more systematic approach at ...

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...ut we are indisputably still improving our system and admit to our flaws and lack of perfection.
Over one-hundred and thirty people have been dismissed from death row after new evidence led to the realization of their innocence, this would have been one-hundred and thirty wrongful deaths. There is the prospect that maybe the argument is not concerning capital punishment as a whole, but rather whether or not we should be relying upon a system that is not completely accurate to kill. Regardless of the actual validity of the basis of the executions, it is time for a stance to be taken against the barbaric practice of the execution of members of society, no matter how heinous their crime. The abolishment of this institutionalized murder can only lead to progress in our nation and in the world, as we attempt to add humility to a government that so desperately needs it.

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