In 1972, The Supreme Court declared that under then existing laws "the imposition and carrying out of the death penalty...constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments." But within four years, due to hole in the system, the Court stated "the punishment of death does not invariably violate the Constitution." They ruled that the new death penalty laws contained "objective standards to guide, regularize, and make rationally reviewable the process for imposing the sentence of death." Executions resumed in 1977 and as of May 1999, over 3,200 men and women were under a death sentence and more than 360 had been executed. Not only are executions a way of cruel and unusual punishment, it goes against our beliefs as a human race. A life for a life is not how punishment should be seen as. The death penalty should be abolished due to many reasons, not just because of its cruel behavior, but also it wastes resources.
             The primary reason why capital punishment should be opposed is because it is cruel and unusual. It is cruel because it is a reminder of the days of slavery, branding, and other bodily punishments were common. Like those barbaric practices, executions have no place in a civilized society. It is unusual because only the United States, out of all of the western industrialized nations, engages in the death penalty. The true cruelty is the methods of execution. Any one of five methods executes prisoners in the United States; in some places the prisoner is allowed to choose. The traditional method of execution, hanging, is an option still available in New Hampshire, Delaware, and Washington. Death on the gallows is easily goofed; if the drop is short, there will be a slow and agonizing death by strangulation or if the drop is too long, the head will be torn off. Two states, Idaho and Utah, still authorize the firing squad. The prisoner is strapped i...