Capital Punishment

7 Pages 1827 Words

A cold feeling of steel presses up against you as you are secured tightly into your seat and a bright light is shined upon you from above. Suddenly you feel a sudden rush of pain shoot down your spine and throughout your entire body. Your body jerks violently, then again, and then one final time. Then the light slowly begins to fade away.
The electric chair, the gas chamber, and the lethal injection are all forms of capital punishment that are still implemented in the United States today. Is capital punishment really necessary? When does life have the right to generate death? When were we given the right to decide who lives and who will die? The guillotine, the noose, the crucifix, all relics of capital punishment from our history’s bloody past. However, in today’s times of revolutionary medical technologies and computer science marvels, have we still not progressed past the simple barbaric acts of manslaughter for no other reason then the sake of repayment of debt to society? Capital Punishment brings forth incredible arguments, beliefs and opinions on whether the act is right or wrong and whether or not it should be utilized. Since the days of Hammurabi’s Code utilizing “eye for an eye” justice, capital punishment has provided both an effective and appropriate punishment for capital crimes. However recently, increased opposition to the death penalty has surfaced, raising concerns as to the future of this punishment method.
In the past, capital punishment, or execution, consisted of the severance of ones head. In the United States today most executions are done by lethal injection. The U.S. is one of very few industrialized countries that still exercise the death penalty. In the year 2002, sixty-one of the seventy-one executions took place in one of our southern states (Capital). From 1976, when the death penalty was reinstated, up to January 1, 2003, there have been 280 executions all happening in the five s...