Death penalty or capital punishment is a legal process by which a person is sentenced to death by the state as punishment for a crime committed. The crimes that can be judged as worthy of the death penalty are varied and change according to the historical period, the socio-cultural context of the nation and its legal constitution. Historically, death penalty is applied in the occasion of murder, espionage, rape, adultery, homosexuality, Politics Corruption, and others. Death penalty is found abolished in almost all the countries of Europe and Oceania. In North America, it was abolished in Canada and Mexico and some US States. In South America, Brazil, Chile and Peru, it is still legal but exceptionally in legal cases.
Death penalty is as old as society itself, having been used in a socially legitimized and legally supported or even criminally so, as is the case of executions carried out by criminal gangs. Death penalty began since the Roman Empire, with the death by crucifixion, drowning, lynching and impaling until the death row of modern years running by lethal injection, hanging or the electric chair, the death sentences have been already used by a huge number of nations.
In Brazil, the
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The death penalty by the State institutionalizes the death penalty that already exists on the part of criminals, therefore when the state decides to kill, takes on a right that denies its citizens. Consequently, the death penalty is a contradiction by the State. Also, the death penalty is not effective because it does not reduce crime. The criminal does not think about the consequence ate the time of committing the crime; proof is that he commits his crimes thinking that will not be punished. As said by a police lieutenant in Kansas, "I have never heard a murderer say they thought about the death penalty as consequence of their actions prior to committing their crimes." (Gregory Ruff,