Capital punishment is the specialized execution of criminals guilty of society’s most heinous crimes. Since the medieval times criminals have been removed from the population through execution as a method of deterrent against these crimes. Not only were these criminals killed but the method by which they were done away with was particularly violent. Many times it consisted of drawing and quartering which involved hanging until nearly unconscious, removing the entrails of said criminal, tying a rope to each limb and attaching each to a separate horse which then pulls in opposite directions, thus separating the body into 4 relatively equal parts; hence “quartering.” This method has since been abandoned throughout the world and replaced with more “humane” methods. Some of these include: beheading, electrocution, hanging, lethal injection, shooting, and stoning, although lethal injection and shooting are the most common methods today.

Today many countries have abolished capital punishment as a “cruel and unusual punishment” just as the United States did in 1972 when the Supreme Court deemed it unconstitutional by the eighth amendment which states “Excessive bail shall not be required nor excessive fines imposed nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” However, upon the review of the death penalty by the individual states and the revising of death penalty policy, capital punishment was reinstated in 1976. This very same process has been repeated throughout the world, Nepal abolished and reinstated capital punishment since 1990 as did Philippines, although most of the 40 nations that have abolished the death penalty since 1990 have kept faithful to this policy (Facts and Figures on the Death Penalty, Amnesty International).

Today in the U.S. it is up to the individual states to decide whether or not the judge or juries have the right punish a prisoner with death. Nineteen states do not have the death penalty or have not used it since its reinstatement in 1976 (FACTS ABOUT CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: PART 1). Texas has killed the most people since 1976 with 313 out of a total of 885 (World Almanac and Book of Facts, 651) but most of the executions in the U.S. are done by and in five states, the aforementioned Texas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Florida and Virginia (FACTS ABOUT CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: PART 1). The majority of these are done using lethal injection.

Internationally it varies widely as to whether or not capital punishment is actually in place and if it is the method by which it is carried out. In Afghanistan and Iran, stoning is a legitimate method of capital punishment (Facts and Figures on the Death Penalty, Amnesty International). This used commonly throughout biblical times, this is a method by which the victim is buried up to the neck and pelted with rocks until they die (FACTS ABOUT CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: PART 1). This is used as a punishment for murder, adultery and similar crimes (FACTS ABOUT CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: PART 1). Many countries today have banned the use of the death penalty and many have done so recently, both Canada and Mexico have done so since 1990. There are 86 countries around the world that have completely banned the use of the death penalty. On the other hand the U.S. has killed very few inmates in comparison to China, who, official reports estimate, kills at least 3400 people per year. The total number of people killed by capital punishment in 2004 is only 3797, giving China 90% of the total of those killed every year by the death penalty. And that is only the official reports. There have been unofficial counts that hover around 10,000 in 2004 by China alone which would give China 96% of all those killed worldwide by capital punishment (Facts and Figures on the Death Penalty, Amnesty International).

Capital punishment has been controversial all the time it has ever been in place and for good reason. There are many flaws in the arguments for the death penalty although there are relevant arguments for it, the costs outweigh the benefits by a large margin. It is often stated that the death penalty is the ultimate deterrent, whereas the violent crime rate in states with the death penalty is on average almost twice as high as in states without the death penalty (FACTS ABOUT CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: PART 1). Also, contrary to popular belief, it is far more expensive to execute a prisoner than it sis to imprison them for life. There are flaws in the America legal system that allow for the execution of innocent people. And finally the argument of its inhumanness, can killing in any form ever be “humane”?

The argument that capital punishment is a deterrent is being seriously challenged based on certain facts along with the opinions and observations of many of those within the law enforcement system. An extensive survey conducted by the united nations in 1988 and updated in 2002 concluded “. . .it is not prudent to accept the hypothesis that capital punishment deters murder to a marginally greater extent than does the threat and application of the supposedly lesser punishment of life imprisonment.” (Facts and Figures on the Death Penalty, Amnesty International) Upon conducting a survey of police chiefs around the nation the following was found to be true: “Police chiefs rank the death penalty last as a way of reducing violent crime, placing it behind curbing drug abuse, more police officers on the streets, lowering the technical barriers to prosecution, longer sentences and a better economy with more jobs.” (Dieter, 23) Using this argument was simply an assumption that fooled the majority of the population until it was disproved through extensive research.

The death penalty is also far more expensive to carry out than it costs on average $2 million more to imprison an inmate for the rest of their lives (Morgenthau, 15). The average amount of time an inmate spends on death row appealing their case before they are actually executed is 7 years. The longest amount of time ever spent on death row before execution was 17 years. Some argue that we should simply eliminate this process to save time and money. But it is this very process that we rely on to determine the innocence of the accused. The execution of innocent people (which some still claim happens) is prevented for the most part as a result of the length of this process. Even so, Great Britain has refused to extradite prisoners to the United States until the possibility of the death penalty was dropped, not because of the punishment itself but because of the waiting period between the sentencing and the actual execution (Dieter, International Influence…). This waiting period has been deemed by many more inhumane than the execution itself.

The possibility of the execution of innocent people is also a dark cloud that always seems to hover over the issue of capital punishment. As long as there are human being trying the cases of other human beings there is going to be bias involved in one way or another. In the past century more than 160 inmates have been exonerated as a result of DNA testing, of those 160, 14 of them were on death row (Colin, 787). 14 innocent men who could have been killed and, according to the American legal system, should have been killed were, in fact, not guilty of crimes heinous enough for their lives to be taken from them. For a human to pay the ultimate sacrifice over a crime that they did not commit is simply unthinkable. It is hard to believe that it may very well have already happened. It has been estimated that over the years in the United States up to 23 people have been executed for crimes which they did not commit (Morgenthau, 15).

Then one must ask one’s self, could taking the life of another human being ever be considered humane? Especially since most of the time when someone is sentenced with the death penalty it is as a result of killing someone in the first place. Some argue that the reason violent crime rates are higher in areas where the death penalty is imposed is because the government “cheapens the value of life” (FACTS ABOUT CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: PART 1). Gandhi once said “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.” One must consider the possibility that in killing those who kill others, they are simply normalizing the act of murder.

There are many arguments for retaining the death penalty, but it seems that there are so many more reasons that it should have never been in place in the beginning. The death penalty should dimply be abolished, there are many, many alternatives that could be utilized over this unreliable, inhumane, expensive, broken “solution.”