The most severe of all sentences: that of death. Also known as the death penalty, capital punishment this is the most severe form of corporal punishment as it is required law enforcement officers to kill the offender. It has been banned in many countries, in the United States, an earlier move to eliminate capital punishment has now been reversed, and more and more states are resorting to capital punishment for serious offenses such as murder. An Eye for an eye, a life for a life, who has never heard of the famous lex talionis? The Bible mentions it, and people have been using it regularly for centuries. We use it about burglary, adultery, love, and many other situations. However, some people use it on a different level; some people use it about death.
             One steals from those who have taken from him; one wrongs those who have wronged him but do we have the right to kill those who have died. Today, there is a big controversy over capital punishment whether or not it works, or if it is morally right. We have a particular privilege in our own lives, but do the lives of others belong to us as well? Do we have the right to decide the kind of lives others can or cannot live? We find someone guilty of murder and sentence him to death, does that not make murderers out of us? Can justice justify our acts? Those who assist in the death penalty are they not partners in crime? Is the death penalty a "Cruel and Unusual" punishment, or is it now a necessary tool in the war on crime? With the increase in crime and violence in our society, how does the death penalty affect a North American family?
             Use of the death penalty has declined throughout the industrial Western World since the 19th century. In 1972, movement in America to have the death penalty declared unconstitutional during the landmark case of Furman v. Georgia, which declared the death penalty cruel and unusual punishment. However, after a Supreme Court decision in 1975, Gregg v. Georgia...