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May 7, 2007

Capital Punishment

Capital punishment has been used since the beginning of man to punish people that have committed the most heinous crimes. All countries around the world, view capital punishment as a way to give criminals what they deserve and to rid the world of the people who will do nothing else but murder. The baffling protests against this ‘inhumane’ act started in America in the late twentieth century. People for some reason starting arguing and passing laws on how ruthless criminals could be punished and sentenced to death. The strange thing about this is that caring people are trying to abolish the death penalty when in return if the murderers were sent free they would kill the very same people who are passing these laws without hesitation. The sentencing of death really wasn’t a popular act until the just after the middle Ages. ”England had mandated 14 offenses to be punishable by death, while the newly founded American colonies imposed the death penalty for far fewer crimes. Captain George Kendall in Jamestown, Virginia became the first recorded execution in the new colonies for the crime of espionage in 1608.” The first known opposition towards capital punishment was in 1767. “Cesare Beccaria’s essay on Crimes and Punishment proposed that it is not necessary or just to punish by death. He favors life imprisonment and states, perpetual slavery. This is all that is necessary to deter the most hardened and determined criminals from committing crimes.” If I was going to commit a crime and new I was only going to spend life in prison for it, I would think I would be more likely to commit that crime than if I new if I committed it I was going to die for what I had done. It used to be that all death sentences had to be performed outside city hall for the entire public to see. “In 1834, public display of hangings was abolished and the state required each county to conduct private hangings in jail.” I think this



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