Capital punishment in America has existed since the establishment of the British colonies, with the 1608 execution of Captain George Kendall in Jamestown, Virginia, on the accusation of spying for Spain. The first laws involving the death penalty actually date back to the eighteenth century B.C.E. Code of Hammurabi, which lists death as the punishment for twenty-five crimes. Capital punishment continues to manifest itself in various areas of the world throughout history, from the Hittite Code in the fourteenth century to the Draconian Code of Athens in the seventh century and the Roman Law of the Twelve Tablets in the fifth century B.C.E. Use of the death penalty in numerous forms continued into the sixteenth century C.E., with executions
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Proponents of the death penalty, such as lawyer Kent Scheidegger, believe that executing criminals is a necessary step to stop those who have committed such a heinous crime as murder before they repeat their crime. This is because imprisonment instead of execution allows room for appeals, parole, or escape, which potentially puts killers back on the street. Additionally, in an “eye for an eye” approach, execution of murderers is the only punishment that is fittingly severe for the crime and so capital punishment brings the appropriate level of suffering to those convicted of capital offenses as imprisonment does not. For example, in the Boston Marathon bombing, 21 year old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was sentenced to death by a jury in liberal Massachusetts where about 60% of voters were against the death penalty in the case. However, Tsarnaev was dealt the death penalty due to his lack of remorse for the heinous crime of senseless killing that he had helped perpetrate. In addition, use of such a serious and irreversible punishment would deter others from violent crime and gradually lower the murder rate in the United States. Another advantage of capital punishment is the closure that execution of the murderer brings for the victim’s family members and for the crime itself. By executing …show more content…
As previously touched upon, litigation involving the death penalty alone costs the state government more than ten times the amount that the case would if the death penalty was not asked for. This is due to the significant increase in the length of time that a case involving the death penalty takes, which totals to more than a thousand extra days that court resources are used and must be paid for, for the initial prosecution alone. Adding in the time for the many long appeals that usually result from capital convictions just raises the monetary and emotional cost to the state and victim’s families
Proponents of the death penalty, such as lawyer Kent Scheidegger, believe that executing criminals is a necessary step to stop those who have committed such a heinous crime as murder before they repeat their crime. This is because imprisonment instead of execution allows room for appeals, parole, or escape, which potentially puts killers back on the street. Additionally, in an “eye for an eye” approach, execution of murderers is the only punishment that is fittingly severe for the crime and so capital punishment brings the appropriate level of suffering to those convicted of capital offenses as imprisonment does not. For example, in the Boston Marathon bombing, 21 year old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was sentenced to death by a jury in liberal Massachusetts where about 60% of voters were against the death penalty in the case. However, Tsarnaev was dealt the death penalty due to his lack of remorse for the heinous crime of senseless killing that he had helped perpetrate. In addition, use of such a serious and irreversible punishment would deter others from violent crime and gradually lower the murder rate in the United States. Another advantage of capital punishment is the closure that execution of the murderer brings for the victim’s family members and for the crime itself. By executing …show more content…
As previously touched upon, litigation involving the death penalty alone costs the state government more than ten times the amount that the case would if the death penalty was not asked for. This is due to the significant increase in the length of time that a case involving the death penalty takes, which totals to more than a thousand extra days that court resources are used and must be paid for, for the initial prosecution alone. Adding in the time for the many long appeals that usually result from capital convictions just raises the monetary and emotional cost to the state and victim’s families