Death Penalty: Effective Method of Punishment for Murder

Lethal injection has become the preferred method of execution in the United States since the early 80's. But is lethal injection a harsh enough penalty for murder? The answer is no, it is not a good enough punishment for someone who has taken the life of another. Lethal injection is a process that allows a convict to be put down quickly and painlessly, but what happened to the older methods? Methods such as hanging, electrocution, and firing squads are not used in a large scale these days. These methods are the kind that makes the offender miserable for the last moments of their life; these are the methods I think that should be used today.

I am going to argue that the life in prison is not enough, the death penalty should be worse than what it is, and public executions have a greater deterrent effect. There are a lot of families that want more justice to the person who killed a family member then life imprisonment and that is just what they should get. For a family who has one of their own taken from them, the grief they feel is unimaginable. They need justice to be served to aid them to deal with their loss; they need the victim's death to be avenged. Life imprisonment is not enough.

It is not a help to a grieving family to let the offender spend the rest of his days in jail, eating three square meals a day and watching TV. Quite frankly, it is not proper justice on behalf of the victim either. Ancient civilizations would not have thought twice about sentencing a person to death for taking the life of another. Opponents of the death penalty would argue that the death penalty is barbaric and inhuman, but what about the murder of innocent people? Is life in prison the punishment we want people to believe they will receive for murder?

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Prisons these days are state of the art, with weight rooms, work programs, televisions, food, and warm beds. Prison is a step up from the conditions that some people live in. Life in prison is more of a gift to some people then a punishment. Some people say that life in prison is worse then death because the offender will have to think about what they did every day for the rest of their life. Just knowing what they did is not good enough. Executions do not happen the minute after they commit a crime, there is enough time for them to think about what they have done while they wait for their life to be ended.

Executing life prisoners will save money in long run. If a criminal committed a murder at 18 and lived to the average life expectancy of an American, taxpayers would have to pay for that convict for at least 50 years. If that same criminal was executed at 19 hundreds of thousands of dollars would be saved on that convict alone. In a system that is overworked and overcrowded it could be just the thing to aid the criminal justice system that it so desperately needs. Needed jail space would be freed up for criminals with lesser offenses who might receive probation and commit other offenses.

The money it would save would enable a lower amount of money to be allotted to prisons that have to house these inmates who could have received death. That money could in turn be used in programs to help deter people at and early age from committing all types of crimes. Some murderers will never feel remorse for what they have done, what will life in prison do for those people? There is an old saying "an eye for an eye" and only with that theory can justice be served. Since ancient times criminals have received the death penalty because the crimes they have committed have damaged people and families forever.

Murderers are not good enough to receive life in prison. They have committed the ultimate crime, taking the life of another. Allowing convicted murderers to receive the mercy of the courts and get life is the wrong message we want to tell the public. To let murders off easy is an insult to the victims, the families, and society as a whole. Lethal injection is too lenient of a death penalty for a harsh crime; criminals sentenced to death should receive harsh penalties like the crimes they committed.

We should punish a murderer more severely then we do today. It is hard for a family to just go watch a prisoner get an injection, after all, the victim most likely received a more violent death then an injection. Justice for murderers should be more violent. Why should they just give them a little injection when they did worse to their victim? The punishment system should be just the same as what the murderer did. For example, if a murderer shot somebody in the arm, and the next day they died, then he or she should be shot in front of their family.

Let them suffer. If he does not die, then shoot him again. The 8th amendment prevents cruel and unusual punishments. The amendment was established in part because Supreme Court justices felt that personal vengeance has no place in the criminal justice system. The fate of a murderer was left to a jury of people that did not know the victim, most likely have never had anyone they love taken from them in cold blood, and do not know what it feels like knowing someone they loved suffered the way the victim did.

I think the amendment should be abolished. Maybe it is time families got a little vengeance. There is no end in sight for murders so why not allow the families of victims to avenge the deaths of their loved ones, and allow them to get the proper justice they seek. The loss of a loved one to a horrible death is unimaginable, and then for the person who took that loved one away from a family to just go to sleep and never wake up again is not enough. "Robert E. Crowe, the Illinois state?s attorney" was a great supporter of the death penalty. I urge capital punishment for murder," he once exclaimed, "not because I believe that society wishes to take the life of a murderer, but because society does not wish to lose its own" (Kronenwetter)". In England, many years ago, they used a different kind of death penalty. Instead of using a regular death penalty, they would torture their prisoner until they were dead. In the late middle Ages, European countries executed people for minor offenses; England primarily reserved the death penalty for such relatively serious crimes as murder, treason, rape, arson, and robbery.

However, pick-pockets and other petty thieves were most often executed. Hanging and beheading were the most common executions. This is what the United States should start doing. If we would begin to hang and behead murderers, then their definitely would not be any more crimes committed. In England, the array of crimes punishable by death has increased over the years, until the early nineteenth century more than two hundred different crimes had become capital offenses. The death penalty in the American colonies was a little similar to ours in this day. Treason and murder is what made them give the death penalty.

Certain country's have different regulations for the death penalty. Murder was the capital crime in the colonies, as was treason or rebellion. In the Massachusetts colony, cursing one's parents was a capital crime. This information is a great help for our capital punishment system. We need to start following the laws from back then. The little crimes we can do away with, but to hang or behead someone would be a lot more deterrent. In the wake of the American Revolution, the U. S. Constitution gave both the states and the federal government the right to set their own criminal penalties. The very first congress of the United States passed federal laws making death the penalty for rape and murder, and each of the original states made other crimes punishable by death as well (Kronenwetter)". These executions go a little to far for the crimes they committed back then, but if we use some of those punishments these day's, then there definitely will not be any crimes. While the United States is seen as barbaric to other countries because most do not have the death penalty, they do not have the murder rates we do. Other countries do not have violent murderers like we do either.

If we can not prevent murders, we can at least use harsher penalties to punish offenders. Penalties like hanging, electrocution, firing squad, and the gas chamber need to be reintroduced. The current punishments would make us believe that people who take another person's life should receive the same treatment as a sick family pet, a simple injection that brings about a quick, painless death. Is that really justice for a murder victim? If murder victims could have their say they would want murderers to suffer the same pain that they did, but unfortunately they cannot have their say because their lives were savagely cut short.

The only way for victims to receive the justice they deserve is for their assailant should suffer like they did. Executions alone are not enough of a deterrent. Executions that are opened to the public could be just the deterrent we need. The number of murderers committed increases everyday. Why can't we stop them? This has been a question for as long as time. Putting the injection to them will not stop anything. Think about it, if everyone in the world could watch a murderer get executed, who would want to kill anyone anymore. They would not want to o through what they have seen, so maybe it will change their mind and make them think before they do so. In the old days when there were public executions there were no where near as many murders as there are today. All executions were public in the old days including hangings here in the United States. Public executions were done away with because they were seen as barbaric, but how will people in the world today realize the punishments for killing if they do not know what an execution is like? Just telling people killing is wrong is not enough.

They need a mental image to be able to put with the thought of murder. Public executions are just the thing that would make people learn murder is wrong and it carries with it a harsh penalty. Penalties such as hanging, electrocution, and the firing squad should be used more often. We do not have to go as far as some Arabic countries where people get mutilated until they die, but we do need to make harsher penalties viewable to the masses. The government should show the executions on television, and open the executions up to a public audience.

People would not even have to view the execution to get the effects of it. The media would talk about it enough that the message would be conveyed to everyone. The harsh penalties would be the deterrent they were always meant to be. The death penalty has been in murky water since the early 80's. Even with the most painless method available used the country as a whole is still seen as barbaric throughout the world. The greatest civilizations in history all used the death penalty and a much harsher penalties then used today.

From the Egyptians to the Romans, and the Middle Ages until today the death penalty has always been used. While it has always been used, no civilization has ever used a painless method as such as we use today. That is why there were not murderers like there are today. Every one knew the punishment for murder was a painful and severe death. Now murderers can receive life imprisonment instead of the death penalty allowing them to spend the rest days behind bars watching TV. Harsher death penalties would help relieve the grief victims families will feel after the loss of their loved ones.

Death is the only right way to avenge the death of any victim that they can not get any other way. Death penalties have never been a great deterrent but they have been even less of a deterrent since they have been made less painful and private. Only a modified harsher death penalty can help severe crimes to been seen as morally wrong to the public as a whole. Robert Crowe said, "It is the finality of the death penalty which instills fear in the heart of every murderer, and it is this fear of punishment which protects society (Kronenwetter)". ________________

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