Capital Punishment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Capital Punishment - Essay Example After 2004, lethal injection (perceived by many as the least gruesome way of executing someone), hanging and beheading were the main methods used. Electrocution and the gas chamber are used in the United States only if the inmates wish to be executed by these methods. Stoning to death for sexual offences still occurs in some Islamic countries, notably Pakistan.2 From 1990 to 2003 Amnesty International reported a global average of 2,242 executions per year. In 2003 Amnesty reported 1,146 executions in 28 countries, 88% of them in just 5 countries: The People’s Republic of China 726, Iran 108, the U.S. 65, Vietnam 64 and Saudi Arabia 52.3 The figures reported by Amnesty in 2004 showed an increase over the previous year, totaling 3,797 executions in 25 countries, about 90% of them (3,400) in The People’s Republic of China, 230 in Iran, 64 in Vietnam, and 59 in Opposition to Capital Punishment began in Europe in the 1750s. Persons like Cesare Beccaria (Italian jurist), Voltaire (French philosopher), Jeremy Betham and Samuel Romilly (English law reformers) declared that Capital Punishment was inhumane and should be replaced by life imprisonment.5 Today, Capital Punishment has been abolished in the vast majority of democracies in Europe and Latin America, while it is still retained in most democracies in Asia, the U.S. and almost all totalitarian governments. In the U.S., the Supreme Court abolished it in 1972 on the grounds that it was being applied in an arbitrary and capricious manner which constituted cruel and unjust punishment (Furman v Georgia 1972).6 On July 2, 1976 in deciding the case Gregg v Georgia, the Supreme Court legalised capital punishment.7 Today following a four-year moratorium, Capital Punishment was reinstated in 1976. Today, it is followed in 36 States as well as by the Federal Government.8 Capital Punishment is a far better tool than life imprisonment primarily considering the saving of State and