Capital Punishment

13 Pages 3322 Words

This day and age murders’ actions are becoming more and more incomprehensible. They are no longer just committing murder; they are torturing, mutilating and engaging in extremely inappropriate acts against their fellow human beings. Behavior such as this will continue if nothing is done to stop them. The action to take here is capital punishment. The death penalty is solution to the problem of how to punish these murderers and how to discourage others from committing these crimes.
The first known recorded execution was in 1930. Between 1930 and 1967 there was a recorded number of 3,859 people executed. In 1972, however, the Supreme Court abolished capitol punishment, stating that it went against the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause of the Eighth Amendment. Other debates that lead to this conclusion were centered on questions of deterrence, public safety, sentencing equality, and the execution of innocents, among others. However, in the four years that capital punishment was suspended the rate of heinous crimes increased dramatically. Researcher Karl Spence of Texas A&M University came up with these statistics. In 1960, there were fifty-six executions in the United States, and 9,140 murders. By 1964 there were only fifteen executions, the number of murders had risen to 9,250. In 1969, there were no executions and 14,590 murders, and in 1975 after six years without executions 20,510 murders occurred. (Wekesser, 1993) See a pattern?
Four years after they abolished the death penalty, the Supreme Court made ruling in the case of Gregg vs. Georgia that the death penalty does not violate the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause of the Eighth Amendment. It was determined that the 8th Amendment was crated to outlaw such practices as burning criminals at the stake, boiling them in oil, or “drawing and quartering”, whereas the convicted felon was tied hands and feet to four horses and literally torn to pieces. (Brinker, ...