The Death Penalty
An issue that is debated today is the death penalty. Some people feel that it is a good punishment for some people who deserve it and some people feel that the death penalty is taking away somebody’s life which is God’s job. This paper is going to look at the past, present, and my predictions and recommendations of the death penalty.
The past
The death penalty first started in the Eighteenth century B.C., in Babylon, where a person could have gotten the death penalty for 25 different crimes. In the seventh century B.C., in Athens, death was the punishment for all crimes. The death penalty included crucifixion, drowning, getting beaten to death, burning alive, or impalement.
In Britain, Tenth century A.D., hanging was the most used method of death. In the next century William the Conqueror did not allow any forms of death to be used as punishment (only during war), but this rule did not stay for very long. By the time Henry VIII ruled in the Sixteenth century A.D., about 72,000 people were executed (Death Penalty Information Center, 2008). People were executed for not confessing to a crime, treason, and for marrying a Jew. At that time the death penalty included boiling, burning at the stake, hanging, beheading, and drawing and quartering.
Drawing and quartering was when a person’s vital organs are removed from the body and, if the person is a male, the person’s genitalia would be removed and would be burned in front of that person of whom they took it out of. Then the person would be beheaded and then cut into four parts (Adams, 1995).
By the 1700’s, there were at least 222 crimes that could have been punished by death. Some of them included cutting down a tree, stealing, and robbing a rabbit warren (which is a large amount of rabbits). Between 1823 and 1827, the amount of crimes that could be punished by death was cut...
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