The United States has many arguments, ranging from abortion to gun control, but capital punishment has been one of the most strongly contested issues in the past decades. Capital punishment: is the legal cause of the death penalty on a person convicted of a crime. It is not intended to inflict any physical pain or torture, yet it is only another form of punishment. It is permanent because it removes criminals from society permanently, instead of temporarily imprisoning them. The usual alternative to the death penalty is life-long imprisonment. The death penalty has been imposed throughout history for many crimes, ranging from vulgarity and treason to petty theft and murder. There are many ancient societies that accept the idea that certain crimes deserve capital punishment. Ancient Roman and Mosaic laws allowed the notion of retaliation; they believed in the rule of "an eye for an eye." Similarly, the ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, and Greeks all executed citizens for a variety of crimes. The most famous people to be executed are Socrates and Jesus. Later, Britain reinstated the death penalty and brought it to its American colonies. Although the death penalty was widely accepted throughout the early United States, not everyone approved of it. In the late-eighteen century, enough disagreement of the death penalty lead to important restrictions on the use of the death penalty in northern states. Michigan, Wisconsin, and Rhode Island abandoned the practice altogether. In 1794, Pennsylvania adopted a law to determine the degrees of murder and only used the death penalty for premeditated first-degree murder. Another reform took place in 1846 in Louisiana. This state abolished the mandatory death penalty and authorized the option of sentencing a capital offender to life of imprisonment rather than to death. After the 1830s, public executions stopped but reoccurred after1936.
Throughout history, governments have been extremely inventive in finding ways to execute people.