Capital punishment is still used in some states of America, South Africa, China and Russia. The most common crimes committed are treason and murder.
William Kemmler was the first man to be executed in the electric chair, at Auburn Prison in New York on August 7, 1890. Kemmler was convicted of murdering his girlfriend Tillie Ziegler with an axe in 1889.
The electric chair is used primarily in the United States to execute prisoners who have been sentenced to death. The picture shows a chair from New York State, where electrocution was introduced as a method of capital punishment in 1890. Capital punishment was abolished in the United Kingdom in 1965, although it remains an option within the judicial process of many countries around the world.
Below is a graph of the number of people executed between 1930 and 2000.
Capital punishment is meant to reduce crime, but by looking at this graph you can see that this is not the case.
During and after World War II (1939-1945), the number of executions in the United States began to decline. In 1972 the US Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional and halted all executions. Executions resumed in 1977 and have been increasing since that time.
In 2003, 65 inmates were executed, 6 fewer than in 2002.
In 2002, 71 persons in 13 States were executed -- 33 in Texas; 7 in Oklahoma, 6 in Missouri; 4 each in Georgia and Virginia, 3 each in Florida, South Carolina, and Ohio; 2 each in Alabama, Mississippi, and North Carolina; and 1 each in Louisiana and California.
Of persons executed in 2002:
-- 53 were white
-- 18 were black
Of those executed in 2002:
-- 69 were men
2 were women.
Lethal injection accounted for 70 of the executions; 1 was carried out by electrocution.
Thirty-eight States and the Federal government in 2002 had capital statutes.
The number of prisoners under sentence of death at yearend 2002 decreased for the second consecutive year.
At yearend 2002, 37 States and the Federal prison system held 3,557 prisoners under sentence of death, 20 fewer than at yearend 2001. All had committed murder.
Since the death penalty was reinstated by the Supreme Court in 1976, white inmates have made up more than half of the number under sentence of death.
The 364 Hispanic inmates under sentence of death accounted for 12% of inmates with a known ethnicity.
Among inmates under sentence of death and with available criminal histories:
-- nearly 2 in 3 had a prior felony conviction
-- about 1 in 12 had a prior homicide conviction.
Among persons for whom arrest information was available, the average age at time of arrest was 28; 2% of inmates were age 17 or younger.
At yearend, the youngest inmate under sentence of death was 18; the oldest was 87.
Two states, Idaho and Utah, still authorize the firing squad. The prisoner is strapped in a chair, hooded, and a target is pinned to the chest. Five executioners, one with blanks, take aim and fire. —
It costs $30,000 per year to house an inmate on death row as opposed to $15,000 for a non-capital inmate
Approximately 90 percent of those on death row could not afford to hire a lawyer when they were tried.
Fourteen States executed 85 prisoners during 2000. The number executed was 13 fewer than in 1999. Those executed during 2000 had been under sentence of death an average of 11 years and 5 months, 6 months less than that for inmates executed in 1999.
Above is a picture of where people are strapped in and given the lethal injection.
I think that killing people is cruel and inhumane, but sometimes it can be justified. For example a recent story on the news was the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. In this case I think the death penalty should have been used to Ian Huntley, the man that killed these children.
Below is a picture of the two girls before they were murdered and the man and who killed them and his girlfriend who withheld information.
This is a picture of James Bulger, a two year old boy who was killed by two ten year olds in 1993. They beat him until he was dead and threw him on the railway lines to make it look like an accident.
In my opinion you shouldn’t take the life of someone even if they have murdered someone. Only God has the right to take a life, “the lord giveth and taketh”
