An Argument For The Death Penalty

The death penalty has been around for a very long time. The first recorded death penalty laws date back as far as the Eighteenth Century B.C. in Hammurabi’s Code, which gave the death penalty to 25 different crimes. Hanging was the usual method of execution in Britain during the Tenth Century. In the century after, William the Conqueror did not allow people to be hung or executed unless it was during a time of war, but this quickly faded out. In the Sixteenth century Henry VIII executed 72,000 people under his reign. Some of the common executions at that time were very cruel such as boiling, burning at the stake, hanging, beheading, and drawing and quartering.

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.

Capital Punishment in this country is a very controversial issue, and has been for quite some time. The history of the death penalty in America dates all the ways back to 1622, where Daniel Frank was executed in the Colony of Virginia for the crime of theft. (UAA) Many more unrecorded executions occurred until the U.S. Bureau of Justice statistics began keeping track in 1930. During that time, there was an average of about 150 executions per year. That number rose until about 1938 then began to decline until 1967, when executions in the U.S. came to a halt. There was no law or court ruling that resulted in this, it was more of a self-induced moratorium on the state level. The legal and moral questions seemed to be coming into play. Then a ruling in 1972 by the U.S. Supreme Court stated that the death penalty under current statutes is 'arbitrary and capricious' and therefore unconstitutional under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. (Furman v. Georgia) That ruling was reached on a vote of five to four, clearly showing how even the U.S. Supreme Court Justices, the highest authority of the law, were torn on the issue. This ruling essentially made Capital Punishment illegal in the United States. This lasted about four years, until another case heard before the U.S. Supreme Court (Gregg v. Georgia 1976) that reinstated the death penalty. It stated that it must be administered with guided discretion, meaning it must be applied fairly and uniformly. Two additional cases brought before the Supreme Court this year (Jurek v. Texas) and ( Proffit v. Florida) upheld the original ruling, that the death penalty is Constitutional. All of these court rulings deal with only the legality and constitutionality on Capital Punishment. However, there are many more fractions to be examined to truly evaluate the effectiveness of the death penalty. The question of morality enters into the equation. Is state sanctioned Capital Punishment moral? Deterrence is also another large factor. Does the death penalty deter capital crimes? Any problems within the justice system have to be reviewed, such as defense for lower income individuals, judges discretion, and discrimination. Public opinion on the subject is a fairly important issue, as the laws in this country should reflect the public interest. The economic cost of the death penalty is of cour...

Based on many history records, death penalty or capital punishment was established for the first time in Hammaurabi Law of Babylon people, under King Hammaurabi (1792 – 1750 B.C), according to the Death Penalty Information Center website (“Part I: History of the Death Penalty"). During more than 3,500 years of judicial history of humankind documented by old writings, we have practicing capital punishment for many crimes. The death penalty has been practiced in America for more than 4 centuries and has been a controversial issue for many years. Over time, many states reserved the death penalty solely for murder; although some states abolished the death penalty, there are 32 states that still maintain this contentious punishment. People who are going for or against the abolition of death penalty are making their arguments based on both statistical evidence and their personal perspectives on death penalty cases. Also, to answer the question whether the death penalty should be abolished or not, we need to take into account the moral and legal aspects of the capital punishment. From those points, we will have a full insight of the issue.

“The case Against the Death Penalty.” aclu.org. American Civil Liberties Union, 2012. Web. 12 Feb. 2013

Gershman, G. P. (2005). Death penalty on trial: A handbook with cases, laws, and documents. Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC-CLIO.

6. Bender, David L., and Bruno Leone. The Death Penalty Opposing Viewpoints. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, Inc., 1991.

Civil rights activist Jesse Jackson said, “the death penalty is essentially an arbitrary punishment. There are no objective rules or guidelines for when a prosecutor should seek the death penalty…This lack of objective, measurable standards ensures that the application of the death penalty will be discriminatory against racial, gender, and ethnic groups” The death penalty should no longer be used as a form of punishment due to its excessive cost and the fact that a defendants have been wrongfully executed in the past.

The history of the death penalty in the United States can be traced back to the 1600’s where the first death sentence was carried out in Virginia (Dwankowski,

In 1976 the Supreme Court of the United States re-instituted the death penalty. In1976, the Supreme Court in Gregg V. Georgia declared the death penalty for murder is constitutional (AAE "Capital Punishment"). The death penalty is also fair and serves it justice -- surveyed police chiefs and sheriffs choose the death penalty as a primary method to combat violent crime (Montgomery 2-25-95). In the website Pro-death penalty is stated statistically that approximately 5900 people have been sentenced to death and only about 356 have been carried out. At last count there were more than 3000 inmates on death row this number could be greatly reduced if execution was fulfilled.