Should Capital Punishment Be Legalized Essay

Capital punishment is the penalty of death for crimes such as murder, treason, espionage, and, with certain cases, rape and has been around since the colonies. The Death Penalty Information Center says, “The first recorded execution in the new colonies was that of Captain George Kendall in the Jamestown colony of Virginia in 1608” (“Introduction to Death Penalty”). It also says that in the late 1700s, the United States had an abolitionism movement that created a reduction on capital punishment cases in the early 1800s. This movement caused Michigan to be the first state to abolish the death penalty in 1846; however, it was still legal to use the death penalty in Michigan if the crime was treason. In the 1930s, capital punishment came back in full force and created an average of one hundred and sixty-seven executions per year. This outrageous use of the death penalty lead to the first suspension of the death penalty in June 1972, but that did not last long. In 1976, the Supreme Court ruled that if a state followed guideline …show more content…
The widely used lethal injection protocol involved three – “an anesthetic, a paralytic, and potassium chloride” (Dresser 9). These drugs are now hard to buy because European Union officials are placing bans on the drugs listed above, which has lead America to resort to new drugs that have not be tested (9). One such alternative is in “Drugs and the Death Penalty” by Rebecca Dresser who says that “Missouri officials came up with propofol as an alternative [to an execution], and in October 2013, Florida used another sedative, midazolam, in an execution” (9). Officials have not tested these alternative lethal injections and therefore criminals consider this a cruel and usual punishment. If officials have not tested the new lethal injections, than how can the criminals know that it will be