"God looked at everything he had made, and he found it very good" (Genesis 1:31). Is there anything a human being can do to deserve to have God's gift of life taken away? Then there is the question of whether or not the person is guilty or wrongfully accused. The word "capital" in "capital punishment" refers to a person's head. In the past, people were often executed by severing their head from their body. Capital punishment, one, punishes the criminal, and two, discourages others from committing the same crime.
             Obtaining recent Canadian capital punishment statistics are near impossible because Canada had abolished the death penalty some decades ago. According to Amnesty International, currently only 47% of countries worldwide use the death penalty and the United States is one of the only Western nations still using it. Some theorize that capital punishment might actually increase crime since some criminals see homicide and the consequent death penalty as a roundabout way to committing suicide. On the other hand, since murder is an irrational process, murderers rarely think about risks and rewards of their actions. Besides, a murderer's mentality is "I'll never get caught".
             There is also a popular belief that the death penalty is much less costly than life imprisonment. However, this is far from the truth. According to Spangenberg and Walsh in the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, "The death penalty is not now, nor has it ever been, a more economical alternative to life imprisonment." In fact, a study conducted by the New York State Defenders Association showed that the cost of a capital trial alone was double the cost of life imprisonment. The January 5, 1997, Miami Herald estimated that the true cost of each execution is approximately 3.2 million, or roughly six times the cost of a life-imprisonment sentence. Not only is the death penalty constantly the subject of ethical debate, bu...