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Argumentative Essay: The Use Of The Death Penalty In America

1490 Words6 Pages

By law you have to do the time when you commit a crime, and some states believe in capital punishment. Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the legal authorization to kill an individual as a punishment for a crime. Now, capital punishment is only allowed in certain states, 31 states to be exact. Between the years 1973 and 2015, 148 innocent prisoners on death-row were exonerated and released in 26 different states. The first established death penalty laws occurred in the eighteenth century B.C. in the Code of King Hammurabi of Babylon. The death penalty was codified for 25 different crimes, not including murder. Executions were held for capital offenses such as marrying a Jew, treason and not confessing to a crime. The …show more content…

European settlers brought the use of the death penalty when they came to America. In 1608, Captain George Kendall was executed and it was the first documented execution in the Jamestown colony in Virginia. He was caught being a spy for Spain which led to his execution (pbs.org). The first legal execution of a criminal took place in Virginia in 1622, Daniel Frank committed the crime of theft. In 1665, the New York colony created the Duke’s Laws, this disputed the death penalty for contradiction of premeditated murder, kidnapping, sodomy, perjury in a capital trial, etc …show more content…

Death sentences are not predicted by the heinousness of the crime, they are predicted by the bad work of the defense lawyers, the race of the person on trial or the race of the victim, and in what county and state in which the crime occurred. Between 1976 to 2015, 1,392 executions occurred in the United States, and 995 of them occurred in the South. It has been proven that the criminal justice system fails to protect the innocent and those with serious mental disabilities and illnesses from execution. Every method of execution comes with a very high risk of extreme pain and

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