On the night of January 23rd, 1978, a 21 year-old woman was found murdered. The killer, in no way connected to the victim, had torn all clothes from the woman's body and had ripped open her lower abdomen. A huge knife wound gaped from breast to navel , some inner organs had been cut out. Several ...

John Wayne Gacy A serial killer is an individual who murders at least four persons in a reasonable amount of time. A serial killer continues to kill until they are either dead or captured. However, serial killers are proned to have "cooling off" periods in which they take a short break from killing...

Peter Kurten was a serial killer in Dusseldorf, Germany. Also know as the "Dusseldorf Vampire," Kurten terrified civilians from the late 1800's until in the early 1900's when he was captured. He was born may 26th, 1883. His first murder occurred in 1892 when Peter was only f...

A pregnant wife was brutally beaten, raped, and left for dead. The unborn baby did not survive the trauma. The wife recovered after a long coma, at which time she identified her husband as the attacker, not withstanding his claim that he was out getting some fast food for them. The police closed th...

Prior to the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, abortion was illegal in most states. The 5-4 decision favoring the plaintiff in this case defined a constitutional right to privacy on the basis of which the Court said abortion should be allowed in certain cases. Rather than offering a sweepi...

Our desire to see criminals put to death can be summed up in one word: revenge. We are society that still believes literally in Hammurabi's Code. We want to see an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. While it might be impossible not to feel sympathy for victims and their families, at...

Case Against the Death Penalty Capital punishment in the United States is a problem that cannot be ignored. It is the legalized taking of another's life, and not a good way to punish criminals. The death penalty has no place in an advanced society like the USA. It should be abolished. One...

The death penalty has been around for thousands of years. Punishment by death which was common among all ancient civilizations was made a public spectacle. Crowds would gather to observe executions by boiling in oil, flaying alive, stoning, or impaling. In the 1700s, England had over two hundred ...

A 37 year-old women stunned the nation when she drowned all five of her children on June 20, 2001. Her name is Andrea Yates and she went on trial for their murders in the case known as Texas v. Andrea Yates. Her trail lasted for four weeks and much controversy surrounded it. Andrea admitted to polic...

In ancient times the death penalty was a foundation for the Law of Herod, Lex Talionis, and the ever quotable "an eye for an eye...." Capital punishment is the execution of a person convicted of committing a crime so heinous that certain societies feel there is no retribution short of dea...

In the following pages, I will discuss the history, debate, past and current public opinion, and how it applies to American ideology and opposing values. Both sides have a fair amount of support and I have included direct quotes and paraphrasing from authors, celebrities, journalists, and ordinary...

Capital punishment is the legal infliction of death as a penalty for violating criminal law. The capital punishment debate, in the United States, has been ongoing for almost four hundred years. Opponents of capital punishment cite that it's arbitrariness and the execution of the "innoc...

Capital punishment is the legal infliction of death as a penalty for violating criminal law. The capital punishment debate, in the United States, has been ongoing for almost four hundred years. Opponents of capital punishment cite that its arbitrariness and the execution of the "innocent" as reaso...