re is no dooubt of hte accused person's guilt. This is the one crime in the bible for which there is no restitution possible (Winters 64). The Constitution of the United States also supports the death penalty. Norton quotes James Madison, author of the Bill Of Rights: The Fifth Amendment states ' "no person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury...nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due pprocess of the law' ". The Eighth Amendment states that "' cruel and unusual punishment shall not be inflicted'". (A-14) Since both of these ammendments were enacted on the same date in 1791, it can be safely assumed that executing someone for a capital offense does not qualify as cruel or unusual punishment as long as the individual has mot been deprived of life without due process of the law. The majority of death sentences are not carried out until all appeals are exhausted, which generally takes several years, if not decades. This long appeals process guarantees that the accused recieves due process. In 1974, lawmakers authorized the death penalty for airline hijackings that result in death and in 1988 thay extended the penalty to certain drug trafficking homicides. The crime bill passed in the summer of 1994 approved the death penalty for dozens of new or existing federal crimes like: treason, genocide #, death caused by train wreck, lethal drive-by shootings, civil rights murders, and gun murders commited during a federal drug felony or violent felony. Thirty-eight states have reinstated capital punishment laws since the U.S. Supreme Court banished it in 1972 and reinstated it a few years later. Executions satisfy the public's demand that murderers suffer punishment proportionate to thier offense. If it is wrong to impose the death penalty on murderers, then it would be wrong to forceably take back what a robber took by force. It would be wrong to ...
