The United States is one of the few countries left in the world to practice the often debated punishment by death widely known as the death penalty or capital punishment. Those in favor of capital punishment argue that the consequence of death prevents persons from committing the heinous crime of murder. Those who disagree with its practice argue that it is proven that the death penalty does not deter crime nor does it guarantee that the criminal justice system will not discriminate or execute the innocent while the methods used in executions are horrific and immoral. Will taking the murderer's life compensate for the lost of another? Will it at all ease the pain of losing the victim and just inflict misery on the innocent families of the criminals as well? Ultimately, does the government have the right to play God and take another's life to justify the one that was lost? I hope that hundreds of years from now, through technological means of detecting and correcting potential criminals before they can actually commit crimes, capital punishment will be eliminated and fewer prisons will be in existence. .
In order for capital punishment to be examined, it must be fully understood first. It is the lawful infliction of death as a punishment and since 1608, has been used for a variety of offences. When it first originated, the Bible prescribed death for murder and many other crimes including kidnaping and witchcraft. In America, it has been inflicted for the last 200 years for basically rape and murder while there has been an estimated 19,500 executions in the last 400 years (Amnesty). There has been intense debate regarding the "constitutionality, effect, and humanity of capital punishment; critics charge that executions are carried out inconsistently, or more broadly, that they violate the "cruel and unusual punishment" provision of the Eighth Amendment" (Berns 19). Supporters of the death penalty counter that the amendment was not instituted to prohibit executions.
