Capital Punishment

Essay by spazosburnUniversity, Bachelor'sA+, March 2008

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On February 23, 1994, Bruce Edwin Callins was executed by the state of Texas. Intravenous tubes attached to his arms will carry the instrument of death, a toxic fluid designed specifically for the purpose of killing human beings. The witnesses...will behold Callins...strapped to a gurney, seconds away from extinction. Within days, or perhaps hours, the memory of Callins will begin to fade. The wheels of justice will churn again, and somewhere, another jury or another judge will have the...task of determining whether some human being is to live or die.

Makes you think, doesn't it? The death penalty, is there any penalty more devastating, horrific, and over-exaggeratingly publicized? It's a morally disgusting and degrading deterrent in our society, which in fact, does not work one hundred percent of the time. I disagree with the death penalty for many reasons: 1) it's inhumane to terminate someone's life in order to show the people "who's the boss with all the power" in our society run by government.

2) Another reason is that, it's freaking expensive! The cost to put someone to death is about the same as keeping someone in prison, if not more, for a life sentence (25 years)! 3)My third reason is that the amount of guilt that will befall upon the jury that convicts the accused, the judge allowing this conviction, the witnesses of the execution, the police officer, and the dude who pulls the 'bbzzzzzzzz'zwitch, or induced the poison, is tremendously overwhelming. I would not be able to live with myself, knowing that I had any part in killing another human being.

In early civilizations, specifically 1800BC, the Babylonian King, Hammurabi codified his laws, to become the Code of Hammurabi. Basically, his laws were surrounded by the idea of retribution, "an eye for an eye." For example, if...