Capital Punishment, Speech

Capital punishment has long been used as a form of deterrent for crime. The first real laws involving death as a penalty come from the first set of written laws, The Code of Hammurabi in 1750 B.C. And also according to the Bible the death penalty was used for many crimes such as murder, Exodus 21:12 to fornication, Deut. 22:13. Later the Greek used an extreme form of law, which was the Draconian Code that used the death penalty for every crime. In England during the reigns of King Canute and William the Conqueror the death penalty was not used, but there brutal forms of interrogation often resulted in death. English law recognized seven different crimes as capital offenses, treason, murder, larceny, burglary, rape and arson, which I believe should all be capital crimes today. Efforts to abolish the death penalty began to build near the begging of the 19th century. Many countries had repealed most of its capital crimes, and several states in the U.S. led by Michigan in 1847 abolished the death penalty completely. In 1794 Pennsylvania first recognized a difference between 1st and 2nd degree murder, were the death penalty could only be invoked when there was premeditation or the accused was in the act of committing a felony. Louisiana was the first state to offer a lifetime sentence in prison as an alternative to the death penalty. Public executions were also commonplace until 1936. And so began the times when criminals didn't really have to fear death for there crimes.

The death penalty has been carried out in many ways, most of which are considered barbaric or inhumane by today's standards. Some forms of execution include; boiling, beheading, impalement, burning, crushing, stoning, drowning and crucifixion. During the French revolution, beheading by the guillotine was considered the most humane form of execution; tens of thousands of French people were executed in this manner. The U.S. has had many forms of execution, which where hanging, electrocution, the gas chamber, the firing squad and lethal injection which is the most commonly used punishment, all of which I believe to be too humane. Islam is currently the only modern institution to use stoning or beheading. The fundamental question raised by the death penalty is whether it is an effective deterrent to violent crime, and whether it is more effective that the alternative of long-term imprisonment. (Funk and Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia). Public opinion in the U.S. currently supports the death penalty for murder by more than a two-to-one margin. Supporters of the death penalty say that death is more severe than any life prison term. Supporters also say that life imprisonment is no deterrent to criminals who are already serving a life sentence, so basically an incarcerated person serving a life could kill most of the inmates in the jail and the punishment wouldn't get worse. I mean really what is the difference between a life sentence without the possibility of parole, and 2 life sentences plus 15 years, its all the same, they are going to sit in prison until they die. Those who argue against the death penalty have valid points, mainly the fact the adjacent states where one has the death penalty and the other does not, show no long term differences in the murder rates. But I believe this fact can be invalidated by the fact that we don't use the death penalty very often, so a criminal can have the mentality, ok ill kill this guy and they wont put me to death because cop spelled my name wrong, or ill have a slow trial and they'll just let me go on technicality. Now we all know that the current justice system is in complete shambles, and if we can improve the current justice system then we can reap the full benefits of killing our most heinous criminals. Take for instance the case of John Muhammad the Washington D.C. sniper was convicted for the multiple murders and was sentenced to death, -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------. Now if that isn't a wake up call to the current state of affairs, I don't know what is.

The next and perhaps most important idea behind the death penalty is morality. And the most convincing argument to the fact that killing criminals comes from the bible, according to Genesis 9:6 " Whosoever sheds man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed". This has been considered a divine warrant for putting murderers to death. "Let the punishment fit the crime" this quote is considered the secular equal to