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Example research essay topic: Making The Death Penalty A More Effective Crime - 963 words

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Over the past many years, people have argued over the effectiveness of the death penalty. The majority of executions have come from convictions of homicides (murder), though execution has been a choice in punishment for rape, treason, kidnapping, and armed robbery. Many people consider the death penalty as immoral and ineffective to deter crime. These people are half right; it is an ineffective means to deter crime. With this understood, it is time that we need to make a reform in the death penalty to make criminals, or future criminals, stop from murdering, raping, kidnapping, or robbing. Back in Ancient Rome, under the reign of Justinian I, around 533 AD, many crimes fit the description for the death penalty.

These reasons included, but were not limited to, rape, treason, embezzlement, forgery, and kidnapping. Murder, however, was punished by banishment, a worse punishment than death itself in those days. In England during the Middle Ages, any serious crime, listed as arson, burglary, counterfeiting, murder, rape, and treason, was punishable by the death penalty. Currently, the death penalty is used mainly in cases of treason and murder. Most of the other listed offenses are punished with lengthy jail terms. Through these ages, technology has helped advance the uses of the death penalty.

In the days before Justinian I, most criminals were put into the Coliseum and made to fight either trained gladiators or half-starved lions. Later, after many centuries, executions became a popular public affair. Customs of those days were to pay the executioner some money for a clean swipe; using an axe was not very accurate, and most executioners took two or three hacks before cutting through the neck, as most executions were beheading's. Hanging, of course, was still an option, but if the rope did not snap your neck, then you would slowly choke to death on the rope. In those days, public executions was a very useful deterrent for crime; many people feared the execution for the possible mishap that might occur. The advent of the guillotine quickened the rate of executions to as many as 12 a day, rather than 3 - 4.

Many other forms of execution existed during the Middle Ages. Drawing and quartering, where a person is basically de-limbed by various methods; dunking is when a person is strapped into a chair and dunked into water, then brought up, and switched back and forth until the person dies from drowning. Crushing is a method in which a person is strapped down on a table and has a weight placed on top their chest; each day 10 lbs is added to the initial 50 lbs. Eventually, the stress of the weight will exceed the capacity of the chest, thus crushing the criminals chest, killing him.

Finally comes the guillotine; the guillotine made an execution quick and painless by having a large slanted blade [to slice through, rather than hack] travel downwards between two grooved posts until it went through the criminals head. In current America, the death penalty is generally limited to electrocution, lethal injection, and gas chamber. Two states, Idaho and Utah, have a firing squad as a choice, and three states, Montana, New Hampshire, and Washington, have hanging as an option. The guillotine, beheading in general, and other more cruel and unusual executions have become illegal because of the cruel and unusual punishment law enforced in America. Our current primary method of execution, lethal injection, is not very costly; the average cost for lethal injection is about $ 100 for the three drugs (5. 0 grams of sodium thiopental, 50 ccs of pancuronium bromide, and 50 ccs of potassium chloride [not to mention the saline solution to clean the IV line]). That is not the problem, our laws say that criminals have unlimited appeals, each appeal costing the taxpayers a large sum of $ 2 million plus dollars.

When looking at all the criminals in death row, one could see that $ 2 million dollars per person per trial is a lot of money being wasted on obviously guilty criminals. An obvious solution to this lack of deterrence is to bring back public executions. After watching a person being put to death, would anyone want to commit a crime with a punishment such as that? After bringing back public executions, we should bring back a more rudimentary form of execution, such as the guillotine.

We can modify it so as to not get anyone covered or splattered with blood, especially in these times with transmittable diseases. The other methods, dunking, crushing, and drawing and quartering, are not exactly effective means of executions. Another idea is to get rid of the appeal and re-appeal many criminals use. Putting a limit on the number of appeals, say perhaps two appeals per inmate, will be very much less costly. There is one large group of people who are opposed to the death penalty, the Catholic Church. Their main reason for opposing the death penalty is that God will punish the guilty in the afterlife and that here on earth; everyone should be given a second chance.

For the chance that the murderer might kill again, for the safety of the planet, the killer must be brought to justice on earth, not in the afterlife. The death penalty is not for our own amusement, nor for our justification, it is for the safety of the general public of America. With this all said, we should come to the same conclusion, we should not hide executions behind curtains and glass; executions were meant to deter crime by publicly showing them. Our government should bring back public executions and with it, a decrease in murder. That is the reform needed to prevent repeat and future criminals from doing any harm to our society.


Free research essays on topics related to: lethal injection, deter crime, cruel and unusual, death penalty, middle ages

Research essay sample on Making The Death Penalty A More Effective Crime

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