“Fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; just as he has injured a man, so it shall be inflicted on him” (Leviticus 24:20). This has been the mindset of the justice system for years.
The most controversial of the method of punishment is the death penalty. The death penalty has been here since the fifth century with the roman empire. In the world today we still use this practice but why? The purpose of the death penalty is to punish the crimes of the criminal by death. In the eighteenth century, the death penalty was introduced to America. America began to use the death penalty as a way to punish the black people of America. In the late eighteen hundreds, slavery was abolished and the …show more content…
The only way they could achieve this was to treat them as criminals and give them the death penalty. This resulted in many black people being falsely found guilty and given the death penalty just because they were free. Although some people might say that the death penalty punishes the criminal for their crimes, it does not. The death penalty is too expensive, not helpful to anyone , prone to make making dangerous mistakes, contradicts the law itself, it is barbaric, and many innocent people are sent to die. It cost way more to kill a criminal on death penalty than to keep them in prison without parole (Radlet and Borg,50) . “Death penalty case cost…[per execution] a median of 1.26 million. Non death penalty case cost through the end of incarceration [had] a median cost $740,000” (Amnesty international). The U.S continually spends cash on the a solution that does not even help the cause of decreasing the crime rate in America. The U.S would rather spend millions on the ending of someone´s life rather than …show more content…
There are five methods of death penalty is hanging,fire squad, electrocution,gas chamber and lethal injection (ACLU). There are many cases in which the criminal suffers greatly but is denied access to stop the barbaric killing. John Evans of alabama was given electrocution in 1983 but would not die by the electrical currents. The stench of burning flesh rose in the room. The police commissioner called the mayor to stop the execution but his request was denied. It took fourteen minutes for him to die (ACLU). Double murderer Donald Eugene Harding’s death was not pronounced until almost 11 minutes after the cyanide tablets were added to his gas chamber. During the execution, Harding thrashed and struggled violently against the restraining straps. The criminals die in very inhumane ways all while audience