Capital Punishment is an Effective Deterrent :: Argumentative Persuasive Essays

Capital Punishment is an Effective Deterrent      Throughout history, statistics have proven that Capital Punishment has been an effective deterrent of studycrime.  Capital Punishment is the lawful infliction of death among criminals andhas been used to punish a wide variety of offenses for many years all over the knowledge base (Bedau 16).  When the death penalty is enforced, it shows society thatcommitting a capital crime has deadly consequences.         In early times, many methods of Capital Punishment were used to deter avariety of crimes.  For over a century, the uniform method for executing personsin America was hanging, although starvation was very common also.  There wereexceptions which included spies, traitors, and deserters who would face a firingsquad.  Then in 1888, New York directed the construction of an electric chair(Flanders 11).  It was seed that the new harnessed power of electricitywo uld prove to be a more scientific and humane means of execution.  The firstelectrocution took place in New York in  1890.                 In the past, capital crimes were much different than they ar now.Robbery and the selling of alcohol to underage customers was a serious capitalcrime (McCuen and Baumgart 21).  Rape was also a crime where the criminal wassentenced to death.         In America, scarce thirty-seven states authorize the death penalty.  Inmost of those thirty-seven states, murder is the only capital crime.  TheSupreme Court requires that two conditions must be met in order for a specificmurder to warrant the death penalty (Nardo 32).  The first condition is that itmust be first degree murder, which is the deliberate and moot taking oflife.  The second is that one or more aggravating circumstances must be present. Aggravating Circumstances refer to those aspects of a crime that amplification itsseverity.  An example of an aggravating circumstance would be torture inconjunction with a murder. (Capital Punishment 32).         Every society has faced the problem of what to do with its mosttroublesome criminals.  Many people in the past have argued whether or notCapital Punishment is justified and necessary.         Most societies now believe that a criminal should receive punishmentproportional to the  crime committed.  Most societies believe that such a severepunishment was necessary to install affright in others.         While more social structures developed, the crimes developed into publicand private offenses.  Public offenses such as witchcraft and blasphemy, werepunished by the state  while private offenses still were answered by acts ofpersonal retribution.         The enforcement of Capital Punishment in the early twentieth centurydeclined drastically because of all of the controversy.