The death penalty or capital punishment has been part of our humanity for years and years. It has existed since ancient times, according to people a person who has committed an atrocious act, was sentence to death penalty or capital punishment. The death penalty began back in the 18th century B.C. in the code of king Hammaurabi of Baylon; who was accused of committing 25 crimes. In years following, the punishments were more crucial than today, the execution procedures had no boundaries and forms of killing where endless. Drowning, whacking, “damnatio ad Bestia” which was death cause by a wild animal, dismemberment: dividing the body into quarter-usually with an ax, throwing them off a high place, impalement: one of the most crucial consisting in beating them with a stick, buried alive, the guillotine: decapitation, which they refer as the “quick, clean and humane” way of doing the killing, death by torture, stoning, crucifying was also consider a death penalty act. Jesus Christ was crucified in Jerusalem as part of his punishment for being the son of God. As times passed the process changd slightly to decapitation, execution, hanging, electrocution, execution by gas and the one use to date lethal injection. (1. History of death penalty)
One of the cases that reached the Supreme Court and changed the laws in the United States about the death penalty was the case of Furman v. Georgia in 1971. William Henry Furman claimed that his sentencing violated his rights guaranteed by the 14th amendment. (The 14th Amendment was passed after the American Civil War, and was designed to prevent states from denying due process and equal protection under the law to their citizens. It is divided into two sections. The first section of the amendment was to revolutionize federalism that no state could “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction. The equal protection of the laws, gradually the...