Capital Punishment Research Paper Outline

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Brandon Bjoin CJST 352 Research Paper Capital Punishment Capital punishment is a growing concern within the United States. Just as many people are for using the death penalty as there are people who are against it. The people who are opposed, state that it violates the inmate’s Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment. The Eighth Amendment is stated as follows, “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” So does the death penalty violate this right? Is the death penalty cruel and unusual punishment? I think that this can be explained through the way the inmates are executed. Firing squad, lethal injection, hanging, gas chamber, and electrocution are …show more content…

First, the inmate is taken into the execution room and tied down to the wooden chair using leather straps around multiple parts of their body. A wet sponge is then placed on top of the prisoner’s head to ensure a good connection and to prevent the flesh from burning when the electricity starts to flow through the body. The electrodes are then placed on top of the head and onto the ankle of the inmate. After this is done, witnesses are brought into a different room, which is connected to the room in which the execution is done. The inmate is offered to give a final statement prior to the execution and a black hood is placed over their head shortly after. The execution team is then instructed to leave the room by the Warden, who is also in charge of giving the court order to start sending the electricity through the body. Voltage ranging from 500-2000 volts is then sent through the body of the inmate for about 30 seconds until they are presumed dead by the medical staff. The fourth method of execution used in the United States is by poisoning the inmate inside a gas chamber. The gas chamber was created after the electric chair in 1924 in an attempt to create an even more humane way of executing an individual. 4 states in the United States use the gas chamber today, however, all of these states use lethal injection as their primary method of execution. Just like all of the other forms of execution, the execution staff takes every necessary precaution towards making sure everything goes as