The Death Penalty In The United States

The death penalty is otherwise known as capital punishment or execution, which means punishment by death. Most societies have used this type of punishment in the past decades for criminals. Historically the way they used to go about capital punishment would be by using torture and the executions would be public to society. As of 2015 there are 31 states with the death penalty and 19 states without the death penalty. The first death penalty laws were dated as far back as the eighteenth century B.C. This type of punishment included being crucified, drowned, beaten to death, burnt alive, or impalement. As time marched on in the tenth century A.D, hanging was the new way of the death penalty. There was a different set of rules during this time …show more content…
Research by Bonner and Fessenden (2000) supports that during the last 20 years, the homicide rate in states with the death penalty has been 48 percent to 101 percent higher that in states without the death penalty. That goes to show what this punishment is doing to those criminals and the actions they proceed with. “Michigan abolished the death penalty in 1846 and has resisted reinstating it,” said Governor Engler when asked about which side he chose. He also stated that 60 percent of the residents in Michigan favored the death penalty and 100 percent of those people would not want to pay the taxes on it. In addition with Michigan, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Alaska, West Virginia, Rhode Island, Vermont, Maine, and Massachusetts are all without the death penalty (Bonner & Fessenden 2000). Many factors play a role into why these states don’t reside with the death penalty, like culture, religion, poverty rates, unemployment, and political notions that vary throughout each state. In Minnesota they abolished the capital punishment in 1911, when 60 percent of the residents supported the death penalty. The public policy makers of Minnesota didn’t think that the death penalty was a deterrent, was not efficient, and it was a form of punishment that the people didn’t need (Bonner & Fessenden 2000). Honolulu has the same perspective about the death penalty. Boner and Fessenden (2000) added that after looking at the criminal statistics and finding a correlation between the decreases in general crimes and homicide rather, the smaller crimes went down, and so did the murder rates. According to Bonner and Fessenden (2000) they found the homicide rate in North Dakota, which doesn’t have the death penalty, was lower that South Dakota, which does have it. The same goes for Massachusetts and Connecticut and West