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Controversy: Regarding The Death Penalty “In American Society” There are vast differences in the way people view the death penalty. Some oppose it and some agree with it. There have been many studies trying to prove or disprove a point regarding the death penalty. Some have regarded the death penalty as a deterrent, and some have regarded it as state sanctioned murder and not civilized. The death penalty has been attributed to societies for hundreds of years. More recently, as we become more civilized, the death penalty has been questioned to be the right step towards justice. During the course of this paper I will review the pros and cons of the use of the death penalty as we, Americans, know it. The death penalty is a highly controversial subject. No one knows who’s right or who’s wrong-it’s fifty percent speculation and fifty percent research. It’s just a lot of thoughts and beliefs from people who have contributed to the death penalty hype. Who’s right and who’s wrong? That is the question. First I need to highlight briefly into to the history of the death penalty to fully understand why people feel the way they do about the death penalty. Almost all nations in the world have had the death sentence and had enforced it in many ways. It was used in most cases to punish those who broke the laws or standards that were expected of them. Some of the historical methods of execution were restricted only by one’s imagination-they include flaying or burying alive, boiling in oil, crushing beneath the wheels of vehicles or the feet of elephants, throwing to wild beasts, forcing combat in the arena, blowing from the mouth of a cannon, impaling, piercing with javelins, starving to death, poisoning, strangling, suffocating, drowning, shooting, beheading, and more recently, electrocuting, using the gas chamber, and giving lethal injection (Silverman 73). The ancient societies had some pretty brutal methods that were just plainly inhumane. Fortunately, most of the disgraceful practices were largely unknown in Anglo-American tradition. America inherited most of its capital punishment from the United Kingdom or English laws. But not so many generations ago, in both England and America, criminals were occasionally pressed to death, drawn and quartered, and burned at the stake (Isenberg 35). Had any of these punishments survived the eighteenth century, there is little doubted that public reaction would have forced an end to capital punishment long ago (Isenberg 35). Throughout England, the rotting corpses of executed criminals specked the country, which sent out a warning to all those who dare defy the law, or otherwise acted as a deterrent. Executions were always conducted in public and often became the scene of drunken gatherings to witness the execution. It reminds me of all these horrifying blood-ridden movies we watch today. People are drawn to such spectacles, because they are not getting killed. Furthermore, death is one of the great unknowns in all of mankind. Crimes of every description against the state, against the person, against property, against public peace were made punishable by death in early English laws (Isenberg 26). It is somewhat curious that any of these horrendous and inhumane methods of execution survived as long as they did, for the English Bill of Rights of 1689 proscribed “cruel and unusual punishments”(Isenberg 27). Which is still in use today in the American Constitution. Even with fairly relaxed law enforcement after 1800, between two thousand and three thousand persons were sentenced to death each year from 1805 to 1810 (Isenberg 26). Which is a very large amount even by today’s standards.
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