penalty for premeditated first-degree murder. Another reform took place in1846 in Louisiana. This state abolished the mandatory death penalty and authorized theoption of sentencing a capital offender to life imprisonment rather than to death. After the1830s, public executions ceased to be demonstrated but did not completely stop until after1936. Throughout history, governments have been extremely inventive in devising waysto execute people. Executions inflicted in the past are now regarded today as ghastly,barbaric, and unthinkable and are forbidden by law almost everywhere. Common historicalmethods of execution included: stoning, crucifixion, burning, breaking on the wheel,drawing and quartering, peine forte et dure, garroting, beheading or decapitation, shootingand hanging (Kronenwetter 171). These types of punishments today are considered crueland unusual. In the United States, the death penalty is currently authorized in one of fiveways: firing squad, hanging, gas chamber, electrocution, and lethal injection. Thesemethods of execution compared to those of the past are not meant for torture, but meantfor punishment for the crime.For the past decades capital punishment has been one of the most hotly contestedpolitical issues in America. This debate is a complicated one. Capital punishment is a legal,practical, philosophical, social, political, and moral question. The notion of deterrence hasbeen 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 willdiscourage others from becoming murderers. Retentionists have long asserted thedeterrent power of capital punishment as an obvious fact. The fear of death deters peoplefrom committing crimes.Still, abolitionists (people against capital punishment) believe that deterrence islittle more than an assumption-and a naive assumption at that. Abolitionists claim thatcapital punishment does ...
