Capital Punishment
Throughout the history of the human race, people have been put to death as retribution for various forms of wrongdoing. Prior to the first criminal laws, these killings were acts of private retribution with no specific code for which crime would justify the infliction of death. The earliest set of recorded laws for capital punishment dates back to 1700BC in the city of Babylon. These laws were called the Hamurabe Code, which proclaimed the death penalty to be used for most crimes, including minor offenses like the fraudulent sale of beer (Flanders 5). Many other societies throughout ancient times implemented the same punishment for various crimes, and methods of execution have included such practices as crucifixion, stoning, drowning, and beheading. Egyptians, Athenians, and Romans were put to death for most offenses. One of the most prominent examples was when Jesus Christ was crucified under the laws of the Roman Empire. Widespread use of capital punishment changed very little throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance period. During the reign of King Henry VIII in the first half of the sixteenth century in England, there where over 350 capital crimes resulting in over 70,000 executions (Forer 1
The only time in US history that death rates were comparable was in the 1920's when the murder rate was 10. During the moratorium in the 1970's, murder rates jumped to an all time high of 10. Until the United States can completely change its correctional system, capital punishment should remain in effect as a means of deterrence, protection and retribution. Since the reinstatement of capital punishment, the murder rate continued to decrease to the current day rate of 5. Proponents and opponents of capital punishment both agree that our current correctional institutions fail in many ways. There was also a decrease in the amount of violent crimes during the same time frames. Killing a police officer in the line of duty carries a mandatory death sentence when the killer is convicted in states that allow capital punishment. The statistic from above stating that one out of ten prisoners sentenced to death had committed a prior homicide leaves little doubt concerning the failure of the current systems rehabilitation. Of those prisoners sentenced to death, two out of three have committed prior felonies and one out of ten have a prior homicide conviction (Bureau). The majority of the states practiced executions, although some had abolished them on their own, beginning with Michigan in 1840's. The current system only houses our criminals with little or no rehabilitation effects, which may be why so many of the inmates are repeat offenders. Most of the families of these victims feel the same anguish and need for closure as the victims of Bin Laden's attack on the United States on September 11th or the victims of Nazi's regime. The murderers that have been sentenced to death are just that- murderers.
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Acceptance Essays
