Capital Punishment Essay: Death Penalty In The United States

Andrew Spencer

Mr. Killian

Civil Rights

2 May 2017

Capital Punishment

Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is a form of punishment that is allowed by the United States government where a person is put to death by the state as a punishment for a crime. Although the rate at which the death penalty is used in the US is declining, it is not uncommon and is still legal in 32 states in the United States. The death penalty is performed in different methods by state. The majority of states use the electric chair, but lethal injections, gas chambers, firing squads, and hangings are popular methods of capital punishment as well. Execution by lethal injection is likely to become more common than execution by the electric chair. Electrocution,

The only way to execute someone using the death penalty at this time was by hanging. Executions were much more common in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries than they are now, but were only used for murder and treason. In the 19th Century every state used the death penalty for anyone convicted of a capital crime. Execution rates were the highest in history in the 1930’s, which saw an average of 167 executions a year. The death penalty was made illegal in the early 20th century, but was reinstated in 1976. Today, there are over 60 death penalty offenses, but the number of death sentences handed out is at an all time

The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and is the only country in the world that sentences children to life imprisonment. In Bryan Stevenson’s book Just Mercy, he discusses the death penalty and mentions ways it is practiced unfairly. In Just Mercy, a true story that took place in the 1980’s, a man is put to death by the electric chair, but the chair malfunctions and takes three trials before killing him. The man was fried to death over the course of 30 minutes and his smell reeked through the prison halls. People are put to death without enough reason; the book mentions when the government was forced to rush to execute as many people as possible so they did so with little reason. Stevenson also believes there are more innocent people imprisoned now than ever and that not every man or woman is defined their worst