Many people oppose the death penalty because they consider it cruel. They also make a point of the risk of putting a person to death who is wrongly accused. Supporters believe that in certain circumstances, people who take human life deserve to lose their own. Other people favour the death penalty because they believe that it prevents and eliminates crime, although there has been no found link between the death penalty and the murder rate. Studies have shown that there is no unusual increase in murders when capital punishment is abolished.
According to Amnesty International, about 100 nations have abolished capital punishment. About 90 countries still permit capital punishment, including most developing nations. More than three countries a year on average have abolished the death penalty for all crimes in the past decade. Once abolished, the death penalty is seldom reintroduced. Most European countries, Australia, Canada, and most Latin American countries completely abolished the death punishment in the 1900’s. 15 countries have abolished Capital Punishment for all but exceptional crimes such as wartime crimes. In Australia, Queensland was the first state to abolish the death penalty, in 1922. The last hanging took place there in 1913. The last hanging in South Australia took place in 1964, and it was abolished in 1976.
Capital punishment was widely used during the Middle Ages, especially for crimes against the state and church. In the 1700’s, England had more than 200 capital offences, although most were abolished in the 1800’s. The United Kingdom abolished capital punishment for murder on an experimental basis in 1965 and permanently abolished it in 1969.
The United States is the only Western industrialised nation where executions still take place. In the mid-1990’s, 38 states in the United States still retained capital punishment. In 2002, 81 per cent of all known executions took place in China, Iran and the USA. There are many questions as whether the US will ever abolish Capital Punishment as it is such a powerful and looked up to country for many smaller and “weaker” countries. In a recent pole the people were asked whether they prefer to keep or abolish the death penalty, about 60 to 80% of American adults say that they want to retain capital punishment. Numbers vary depending upon the precise wording of the question asked by the pollsters. When asked whether they would like to see executions continue or have them replaced with a system that guaranteed life imprisonment with no hope for parole ever, and that the inmate would work in the prison and earn money, with that money going to the family of the person that they killed, about fifty five to sixty percent of the Americans preferred this way rather than Capital Punishment and the death penalty.
People murder for a variety of reasons and under many different situations. During domestic disputes, under the influence of alcohol or other drugs; when the perpetrator is not in rational control, hit-men doing contract killings; they don’t ever expect to be arrested, psychopaths and other mentally ill individuals who have little regard for human life and who are unable to accept responsibility for their actions. Self-destructive individuals who believe that they deserve to die and want to be arrested and executed and brain-damaged individuals, who experience periods of rage, and occasionally kill. With the exception of professional hit men, very few people are in a rational frame of mind when they kill others. To just put these people in goal may have no affect on the people at all, and the death penalty is a way of showing that they were wrong.
There were many different ways of dying under the death penalty, including the gas chamber, hanging, lethal injection, firing squad and electrocution. Capital Punishment was normally carries out by hanging in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. In the United States it is carries out by the electrocution, gassing, shooting or injection of a drug, depending on the state. Other methods in the past included the guillotine and the garrotte. The gas chamber works by placing acid under the chair in a box, and a cyanide pellet is released into it. Tubing from a stethoscope on the arm of the chair leads out of the gas chamber to where a physician monitors the heartbeat. The criminal usually loses consciousness after two to three minutes, and is proclaimed dead in about fifteen minutes. The gas is extracted through a hole in the ceiling.
As you can see, there are many different ways that people use to commit Capital Punishment. There are many people that still believe that Capital Punishment is the best way to go to punish people who murder and commit other drastic crimes. I believe that murders should have the Death Penalty imposed to punish them for taking someone else’s life, although everyone has their own opinion and that is fine to have a different opinion. Whether Capital Punishment is ethical is also up to your own beliefs, and I hope this essay has given you an insight into Capital Punishment and helped you determine you own opinion.
World Book Online Dictionary –
http://dictionary.worldbookonline.com/wbol/wbDict?lu=ethics
World Book Online Dictionary –
http://dictionary.worldbookonline.com/wbol/wbDict?lu=capital%20punishment
Amnesty International Report “The Death Penalty”