urder and only used the death penalty for premeditated first-degree murder. Another reform took place in 1846 in Louisiana. This state abolished the mandatory death penalty and authorized the option of sentencing a capital offender to life imprisonment rather than to death. Throughout history, governments have been extremely inventive in finding new ways to execute people. Executions inflicted in the past are now regarded today as ghastly, barbaric, and unthinkable and are forbidden by law almost everywhere. Common historical methods of execution included: stoning, crucifixion, burning, breaking on the wheel, drawing and quartering, peine forte et dure, garroting, beheading or decapitation, shooting and hanging (Kronenwetter 171). These types of punishments today are considered cruel and unusual. In the United States, the death penalty is currently authorized in one of five ways: firing squad, hanging, gas chamber, electrocution, and lethal injection. These methods of execution compared to those of the past are not meant for torture, but meant for punishment for the crime.For the past decades capital punishment has been one of the most hotly contested political issues in America. This debate is a complicated one. Capital punishment is a legal, practical, philosophical, social, political, and moral question. The notion of moving away from capital punishment has been at the very center of the practical debate over the question of capital punishment. Most of us assume that we execute murderers primarily because we believe it will discourage others from becoming murderers. People who want to keep capital punishment have long asserted the deterrent power of capital punishment as an obvious fact. The fear of death deters people from committing crimes. On the other hand people against capital punishment claim that it does not deter murderers from killing or killing again. They base most of their argument against deterrence on statistics. State...
