Louis S. Vega III
December 13, 2009
Ms. Thompson
D.C. English 4 1301/ 3rd period
The Status Quo of the Death Penalty The crime occurs and the city is relieved that Albert Fish has been captured. He was found in an abandoned house eating the brains from a little girl. The coroner finds evidence that the 13 year old girl has been sexually assaulted. Fish is taken to court and will be tried for the raping, murder, and consuming her body parts. Finally, he will be convicted of rape, murder, and cannibalism, resulting in the death penalty. A modern day of cruelty or a great revelation that has been done for centuries, the death penalty is a matter of does he/ she deserve it or doesn’t he/ she. It is a misunderstood ordeal that not too many people have agreed upon the uses of it. The death penalty is a method used to kill criminals charged for a capital crime, because they are serial killers, serial rapists, or other have committed serious crimes that can lead to a death sentence on death row. The only time the death penalty should be administered is when it has deemed constitutional. Crimes punishable by death are murder, armed robbery, weapons possession, smuggling, and treason, acts that may endanger the independence or unity of the state, waging war against the state, apostasy, and prostitution. For decades, people have been supporting the death penalty, and many have thought of it as an unnecessary sentence. For centuries and even going back to the ancient times, people have been sentenced to capital punishment or death penalty. Capital comes from the Latin word capitalis literally "regarding the head". As many people that have been executed the main reason people disagree with having a death penalty is that some people that get executed maybe innocent, but they are killed for a heinous crime they might not have committed. Since the year 1976: 1004 convicted felons have been executed by lethal injection, 155 have died by electrocution, 11 by Gas chamber, 3 have been hung, and 2 by firing squad. That adds up to a total of 1,175 people that have been executed in a 42 year time period. Over thirty-six states, plus the U.S. military and the U.S. government, do have a type of capital punishment, but the rest of the states do not have any form of capital punishment. Of all the types of executions that are used, the main one that is commonly used is lethal injection. The four others are a gas chamber, electrocution, firing squad, and hanging. Since lethal injection is the most commonly used, I will explain a little. After a criminal is sentenced to the die by the death penalty, in that state sentenced. The court chooses a method of execution, in most cases lethal injection, and if it is not declared unconstitutional than after a few years of being incarcerated, the death sentence is carried out, but that is not where the debate begins, not in the courtroom’s, but in our past. Death sentences have been used for many years from the ancient times to our modern era. To me that shows us just how modern that we have become. In an age of blue ray players and smart phones; we still use primitive methods of finding out how in the world someone’s life should be handled after a sentence has been carried out. The people who support the death penalty say it’s fair because it prevent killers from killing again. From 1965 to 1997 its support has rose from 38 percent to 75 percent. Many people believe that it deters criminals from committing crimes such as murder, rape, assault, kidnapping, theft, and other crimes that can lead to a capital offense. A court case in 1972, Furman v. Georgia, declared the death penalty unconstitutional stating that it violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments citing cruel and unusual punishment. However, a later case in 1976, Gregg v. Georgia, the Supreme Court reversed its decision and reinstated the death penalty. Many states brought it back, several kept it abandoned. The victim’s