Death Penalty

A man sitting in a dark room is blindfolded. His legs and his hands are tied. 2,000 thousand volts of electricity rip through his body. It only takes five seconds for this man to be dead. He wasn’t a victim of a random crime nor is he sitting in a casino basement. This scene that I just described is perfectly legal in America. He just received the harshest penalty the American justice system can administer. Capital punishment continues to be a controversial topic in American culture.

In this paper I will analyze the economic and emotional costs associated with the death penalty both within the United States and throughout the world. This paper will also review the current statistics concerning this issue and develop reasonable arguments as to whether or not capital punishment is an effective and ethical solution to the problems of crime in America.

The earliest records indicate that the death penalty first became a common practice in the Eighteenth Century B.C. under t...