FREE ESSAY ON DEATH PENALTY

DEATH PENALTY

In 1972, The Supreme Court declared that under then existing laws "the imposition and
carrying out of the death penalty...constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation
of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments." But within four years, due to hole in the
system, the Court stated "the punishment of death does not invariably violate the
Constitution." They ruled that the new death penalty laws contained "objective standards
to guide, regularize, and make rationally reviewable the process for imposing the
sentence of death." Executions resumed in 1977 and as of May 1999, over 3,200 men and
women were under a death sentence and more than 360 had been executed. Not only are
executions a way of cruel and unusual punishment, it goes against our beliefs as a human
race. A life for a life is not how punishment should be seen as. The death penalty should
be abolished due to many reasons, not just because of its cruel behavior, but also it
wastes resources.
The primary reason why capital punishment should be opposed is because it is cruel and
unusual. It is cruel because it is a reminder of the days of slavery, branding, and other
bodily punishments were common. Like those barbaric practices, executions have no place
in a civilized society. It is unusual because only the United States, out of all of the
western industrialized nations, engages in the death penalty. The true cruelty is the
methods of execution. Any one of five methods executes prisoners in the United States; in
some places the prisoner is allowed to choose. The traditional method of execution,
hanging, is an option still available in New Hampshire, Delaware, and Washington. Death
on the gallows is easily goofed; if the drop is short, there will be a slow and agonizing
death by strangulation or if the drop is too long, the head will be torn off. Two states,
Idaho and Utah, still authorize the firing squad. The prisoner is strapped into a chair
and hooded with a target pinned to his chest. Five marksmen, one with blanks, take aim
and fire. Throughout the 20th century, electrocution has been the most widely used form
of execution in this country and is still used in eleven states. The prisoner is led into
the death chamber, strapped in the chair, and electrodes are fastened to the head and
legs. When the switch is thrown, the body jolts as the voltage is raised and lowered.
With the awful smell of burning flesh in the air, the prisoner dies, and not always
quickly, sometimes it may take many tries. The introduction of the gas chamber was an
attempt to improve on electrocution. In this method of execution, the prisoner is
strapped into a chair with a container of sulfuric acid underneath. The chamber is sealed
and cyanide is dropped into the acid to form a lethal gas. The prisoner breathes in the
gas and dies. The latest mode of the death penalty, which is used in more than thirty
states, is lethal injection. One cannot know whether or not lethal injection is really
painless. As the U.S. Court of Appeals observed, "that execution by lethal injection
poses a serious risk of cruel, protracted death.... Even a slight error in dosage or
administration can leave a prisoner conscious but paralyzed while dying, a sentient
witness of his or her own asphyxiation." With many executions where death was not
immediately, the prisoner has to endure seconds or maybe even minutes of excruciating
pain, when it is supposed to be a quick punishment. 
Another reason for abolishing the death penalty is that is costs more than incarceration.
It is sometimes suggested that abolishing capital punishment is unfair to the taxpayer,
but in reality it isn't. The death penalty is not now, or has it ever been, a more
economical alternative to life imprisonment. A study showed that if the death penalty
were to be reintroduced in New York, the cost of the capital trial would more than double
the cost of a life term in prison. Florida, with one of the nation's most crowded death
rows, has estimated that the cost of each execution is approximately $3.2 million, or six
times the cost of life-imprisonment sentence. Any savings in dollars would be at the cost
of justice, which means less court time on the case. Of course, money should not be a
main reason if someone should die or not, but it is also part of the equation.
Opposing the death penalty does not mean sympathy with convicted murders. On the
contrary, murder demonstrates a lack of respect for human life. For this very reason,
murder is disgusting and authorized killing is immoral. In most murder cases, the
murdered did not suffer as much as the murderer did if executed. Killing a human by
execution, no matter by what method is unethical and should not be tolerated in society
today.