The death penalty and execution, as a whole, has been a highly controversial issue throughout history. Those who support the death penalty believe that it is an appropriate form of punishment and that the murderer deserves to die for taking another's life. Those who are against the death penalty believe that it is not morally right to take another human's life for any reason and that execution is cruel and unusual punishment. While neither side can be "right" or "wrong" (due to the fact that it is a matter of personal values and beliefs), at some point the government must step in and make a decision as to whether or not to allow execution. The state governments (who regulate execution separately) must wrestle many issues in the forming of these laws and regulations; morality, cruel and unusual punishment as it appears in the Constitution, cost, effectiveness at deterring future criminals, and discrimination. In addition, a new question has been brought up about regulating the death penalty; should murderers with proven mental illnesses be executed?
             Cathy Young, a contributing editor of the Boston Globe, discusses both sides of the death penalty with mental illness arguments in her article, "New Look at Execution, mental illness." The article begins with the account of Andrea Yates; a woman who drowned her five children in a bathtub and who also suffered serious mental illness and had previously attempted suicide. Her sentence was a highly debated issue; the article states that, "Critics of capital punishment...regard the execution of someone so obviously sick as particularly heinous." Still others believe that her mental stability had nothing to do with the actual crime and that, because she did kill the children, she deserves the punishment. In my opinion, if the matter of Mrs. Yates' mental instability were proven to a point of absolutely no doubt, she would have been incapabl...