Capital Punishment: Is It Right or Wrong

5 Pages 1265 Words

Capital Punishment is a controversial topic discussed in today's society. There is a heated debate on whether states should be able to kill other humans or not. People that are in favor of the death penalty say that it saves money by not paying for housing in a maximum prison. Those opposed say that it is against the constitution, and is cruel and unusual punishment for humans to be put to his or her death. I believe that the death penalty is against the constitution and is cruel and unusual punishment. The death penalty is cruel because you cannot punish anyone worse than by killing a human being. It is an unusual punishment because it does not happen very often and should not happen at all.

“In America, the first documented instance of capital punishment occurred in the colony of Virginia in 1622. Daniell Frank was hanged for stealing a calf and other chattels from Sir George Yerdley. In 1630 in Plymouth, Massachusetts, John Billington became the first person in the colonies to be hanged for murder. During the revolutionary period, most of the colonies considered murder, treason, piracy, arson, rape, robbery, burglary, and sodomy to be capital crimes. Hanging was the usual form of execution.” In the United States during the twentieth century, the greatest number of executions occurred in the period 1930-49. The two most significant legal decisions of the century relating to capital punishment were handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1970’s. “Furman v. Georgia, on June 29, 1972, the Court, in a split decision, held “that the imposition and carrying out of the death penalty in these cases constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment.” The Eight Amendment forbids “cruel and
unusual punishments”; the Fourteen requires “equal protection of the laws” for all citizens.

Keep in mind that in the United States capital punishment wa...