An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life. This is the age old doctrine of lex talionis, which appears in the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi that has been used as a code of retaliation for thousands of years. Ancient Babylon used lex talionis as a rule used to decide the severity of punishments for the type of crime committed. If a life was taken, then the murderer was put to death: a life for a life (Hood 1). Capital punishment, or the death penalty, is the practice of executing criminals who have been convicted of a serious crime and, consequently, have been handed a death sentence. Criminals have been put to death for thousands of years, though the execution methods have changed drastically since then to present day. Americans today have
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Romans pitted their prisoners, called gladiators, against each other in fights that took place in huge arenas where people gathered to cheer on the gladiators. Roger Hood, the author of Capital Punishment, states that Rome also put prisoners to death in public demonstrations by drowning them ¨in a sealed bag with a dog, cock, ape, and vipers¨, throwing them off of rocks, or a slow death by crucifixion (2). Furthermore, there were public executions in ancient China, where the doomed criminals were either sawed in half, flayed alive, or boiled. Many civilizations in Europe also boiled the convicted, as well as ¨ 'breaking ' on the wheel… burning at the stake, decapitation by guillotine or an axe, hanging, drawing and quartering, and drowning.¨ (Hood 2). The majority of these various executions were usually attended by large crowds. Although public executions were popular centuries ago, they were banned when opinions on capital punishment changed. Public executions were outlawed in England in 1868, and since then many other countries have followed suit with the US 's last public execution happening in the 1930s (Hood
Romans pitted their prisoners, called gladiators, against each other in fights that took place in huge arenas where people gathered to cheer on the gladiators. Roger Hood, the author of Capital Punishment, states that Rome also put prisoners to death in public demonstrations by drowning them ¨in a sealed bag with a dog, cock, ape, and vipers¨, throwing them off of rocks, or a slow death by crucifixion (2). Furthermore, there were public executions in ancient China, where the doomed criminals were either sawed in half, flayed alive, or boiled. Many civilizations in Europe also boiled the convicted, as well as ¨ 'breaking ' on the wheel… burning at the stake, decapitation by guillotine or an axe, hanging, drawing and quartering, and drowning.¨ (Hood 2). The majority of these various executions were usually attended by large crowds. Although public executions were popular centuries ago, they were banned when opinions on capital punishment changed. Public executions were outlawed in England in 1868, and since then many other countries have followed suit with the US 's last public execution happening in the 1930s (Hood