Capital Punishment

Capital Punishment

I personally disagree with capital punishment because life in prison is the worst punishment for anybody.One of the problems I have with capital punishment is that it is the government committing murder. If it is a law that the citizens of the United States can't commit murder then what gives the government the right to commit murder? It is also a fact that it costs the people more money in taxes to execute someone than to sentence them to life in prison.

If someone does something so terrible as this then the people in society deserve to be safe from one less maniac. Why does the government abuse their power by passing a law on some piece of paper and then justify murder just because some paper says it's ok under law.

Each year there are about 250 people added to death row and 35 executed..The death penalty is the harshest form of punishment enforced in the United Sates today. Once a jury has convicted a criminal offense 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.

In 2004, 59 persons in 12 States were executed -- 23 in Texas; 7 in Ohio; 6 in Oklahoma; 5 in Virginia; 4 each in North Carolina and South Carolina, 2 each in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Nevada; and 1 each in Arkansas and Maryland. Statistics show that of people executed in 2004, 36 were white, 19 were African American, 3 were Hispanic, and 1 Asian. At yearend 2004, 36 States and the Federal prison system held 3,315 prisoners under sentence of death, 63 fewer than at year-end 2003. Also Of persons under sentence of death in 2004:1,851 were white, 1,390 were black, 28 were American Indian, 32 were Asian, 14 were of unknown race.

Fifty-two women were under a sentence of death at year-end 2004. The 367 Hispanic inmates under sentence of death at year-end 2004 accounted for 13% of inmates with a known ethnicity. Among inmates under sentence of death and with available criminal histories at year-end 2004:nearly 2 in 3 had a prior felony conviction and about 1 in 12 had a prior homicide conviction.

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