Capital Punishment
Trisha Newcomb
PHI 107
Dr. Frank Morelli
September 08, 2008
Capital Punishment is a very touchy subject these days. Capital punishment is foremost the harshest punishment in the world. In the United States, about 13,000 people have been legally executed since colonial times. (Tolerance, 1995 to 2007) Though the world has changed and punishment is not as harsh as it used to be. Capital punishment wasn’t always used lightly. Meaning: that in other states and in older times. People were put to death for little or no reason at one time. Now the death penalty has almost been completely abolished. A growing number of nations are abolishing their death penalties, including some that were fervent practitioners of it in the recent past. (Thurschwell, 2008)
The death penalty is the ultimate, irreversible denial of human rights. By working towards the abolition of the death penalty worldwide, Amnesty International USA's Death Penalty Abolition Campaign looks to end the cycle of violence created by a system riddled with economic and racial bias and tainted by human error. (Amnesty, 2008)
International law is edging toward declaring capital punishment to be a human rights violation. The US stood all but alone, even among fellow members of the "coalition of the willing," in affirming the appropriateness of executing as thoroughly demonized a mass murderer as Saddam Hussein. Here, Thurschwell elaborates the nature of ethical exception when talking about capital punishment in the figure of sovereignty. (Thurschwell, 2008)
Abolishing the death penalty became a high priority when morals and ethics started becoming more relevant. Before considering feeling of all living things the death penalty was a way of life. It was part of the do unto other as you would like others to do to you. If one killed they shall be killed. People that stole or cheated on a loved one were also put to death. In 1972 the U.S. Supreme Court banned...