FREE ESSAY ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

Each year there are about 250 people added to death row and 35 executed. From 1976 to 1995
there were a total of 314 people put to death in the US 179 of them were put to death
using lethal injection, 123 were put to death using electrocution, 9 were put to death in
a gas chamber, 2 were hanged, and 1 was put to death using the firing squad. The death
penalty is the harshest form of punishment enforced in the United Sates today. Once a
jury has convicted a criminal, they go to the second part of the trial, the punishment
phase. If the jury recommends the death penalty and the judge agrees then the criminal
will face some form of execution, lethal injection is the most common form used today.
There was a period from 1972 to 1976 that capital punishment was ruled unconstitutional
by the Supreme Court. Their reason for this decision was that the death penalty was cruel
and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. The decision was reversed when new
methods of execution were introduced. Capital punishment is a difficult issue and there
are as many different opinions as there are people. In our project, both sides have been
presented and argued fully. 
Different forms of the death penalty are more humane than others. In the 1920's people
decided that lethal gas, or the gas chamber, was more humane than death by electrocution.
Nevada was the first state to adopt the gas chamber as their form of execution. The
Humane Death Bill was passed abolishing all other forms of execution (Hanging or firing
squad were the only other two forms of execution at that time) in the state of Nevada,
this bill was signed by the governor on March 28, 1921. 
Not long after electrocution was tried as being inhumane, the gas chamber was challenged
as being cruel and unusual punishment also. Gee Jon and Hughie Sing were the first two
people to be sentenced to die by lethal gas. Justice Coleman, after the appeal was
denied, relied on the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment
to try and prove thatthe courts was not able to say that lethal gas was a painless way of
putting a man to death. He tried to prove that it would subject the victim to either pain
or torture. Many people attended the execution of Gee Jon, some of who were physicians
and scientists. They came to try and prove that this was a humane way of killing a man,
and were unanimous in the end, pronouncing this as a quick and painless method of
execution. Several of them said they thought it the most merciful form yet devised.
(Vila, pg. 78-79) This is what happened to the victim according to A. Huftaker, E. E.
Hammer, and Major D. A. Turner of the Army Medical Reserve Corps., The man went
unconscious after his first breath of the vaporized acid (liquid hydrocyanic acid). Since
the man was unconscious he did not feel any pain and died almost instantly. There for the
death penalty was for that time a humane way of killing someone. 
Electrocution was also done away with in Florida. In it's place came lethal injection.
The 74 year old oak chair was banished after the second messed up execution in seven
years. Jesse Tafero's in 1990 and Pedro Medina's on march 25. These cases were the basis
for the accusation that the electric chair was cruel and unusual punishment. In both
executions, flames shot from the prisoners' heads when the current of electricity was
turned on. The chair's head gear was blamed for this problem. It was brutal, terrible. It
was a burning-alive, literally, said attorney Michael Minerva after witnessing the Medina
execution. After all this happened the question of what would replace the electric chair
if and when Florida got rid of it came up. The answer to that was lethal injection, a mix
of drugs that sends a person in to unconsciousness and then kills them. This was
described as similar to putting an animal down. This was a method already employed by 32
states and seemed like the best solution to the problem at hand. Of the 32 states already
using lethal injection Florida Corrections Commission surveyed 17 of these states. The
majority of these states said that they switched to the needle, lethal injection because
it is the most humane form of capital punishment. Florida took polls showing the death
penalty was strongly supported. Texas, the first to use lethal injection in 1982, and
other states has had this form of capital punishment tested in court time and time again
and it has always come out as being valid and humane to the victim. 
Is Capital Punishment humane? Which methods, if any, are humane? The Prolonged suffering
of an individual is not humane. Pain is subjective and it is Impossible to know with
certainty the experience - or range of experiences - of those who undergo execution.
Botched executions, where the offender lingers on before death, don not offer
opportunities for us to assess the experience. (Executions in America pg.47) When the
execution goes according to plan, the person doesn't live to tell about the experience
and the effects of it. Execution can be a vary long and brutal process, when something
goes wrong. Long ago, in the United States, hanging was he most widely used method of
execution. the person's spine was supposed to snap. During the 18th Century and earlier,
hanging were often botched. If the prisoner failed to die from the drop then they would
slowly suffocate. If the prisoner was too heavy then the fall could rip the head from the
body. The electric chair replaced hanging. The goal of electrocution is the paralysis of
the heart and respiratory system. This happens through the burning of the internal
organs. Willie Francis was a prisoner who experienced only a few seconds of electrocution
and survived. This was a result of a malfunction of the machinery. He said that the
experience was quite painful and that  My mouth tasted like cold peanut butter. felt a
burning in my head and my left leg, and I jumped against the straps. I saw little blue
and
pink and green speckles.(Costanzo-44) A year later he was executed again. As you can see
from these examples, the executed often undergoes horrific physical and even emotional
abuse. Can you imagine living through electrocution and going through the process one,
two, or three more times! Although we first think of the effects on the executed, we
don't always think of the effects on other people. There are people directly and
indirectly involved. For example, Jurors, prison officials, the families of the
condemned, and even the families of victims witness or are tied to it some other way.
Botched executions can be the result of mistakes by the executioners, equipment problems
or struggling by the prisoner. In order to perform lethal injection a prisoner with a
history of intravenous drug use, the executioner may have to surgically locate
a deeper vein. Even a small error in dosage or administration can leave a prisoner
conscious but paralyzed while dying, a sentient witness of his or her own, slow,
lingering
asohyxiation.(Costanzo-46) The executioner has to live with the fact that there were the
cause of the agonizing death of another human being. A man lying face up on a hospital
gurney is subjected to what looks like a routine medical procedure. The only difference
is that the goal is to kill instead of heal.(Costanzo-47) In 1951, Eliso Mares was put to
death by a firing squad. The prison staff likes Mares and so they aimed away from his
heart Mares bled to death and it was a slow lingering process. Again, the executioners
were at fault. In 1985, Alpha Otis Stephen's was shocked with three 1,900 volt of
electricity. When Stephen's was shocked the first time, he struggled for breath for eight
long minutes. he was shocked again but witnesses spotted him continuing to gasp for air.
After 23 more breaths he was shocked one last time. Fred Leuchter, a major designer of
the electrocution machinery, gave his opinion on the cons of the electric chair: If you
overload an individual's body with current... You'll cook the meat on his body. It's like
the meat on an overcooked chicken. If you grab the arm, the flesh will fall
right off in your hands.. That doesn't mean that he felt anything. It simply means that
it's
cosmetically not the thing to do. Presumably the state will return the remains to the
victim's family for burial. Returning somebody who has been cooked would be in poor
taste. This would affect the victim's family. Even if they chose not to watch the
execution, the remains can be just as emotionally harmful. In the example that I started
earlier, you can gather that is would not be pleasant to see your son or daughter
executed numerous times or shocked a number of times. 
As you can see from the above arguments there are many paths you could take as far as if
the death penalty is humane or not. As an over all out come of this paper I think that
lethal injection is the most humane form of execution. The reason for this is it is
really hard to botch this type of execution but the others such as electrocution and
hanging can be botched quite easily. Although over all I think that the death penalty is
a bad solution to this problem, the idea of two wrongs don't make a right comes into play
in this case quite stongly, if it is really needed then I would have to say that lethal
injection is the most humane form of execution. Although it is humane, I don't think I
would be able to go through with actually being executed or executing someone.
Bibliography
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