ion would be the accepted norm. Eventually, we would all fall victims to capital punishment. Despite opinion, the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment. Whether it is by gas chamber, electric chair, or lethal injection, the process is entirely savage. There have been tales of faulty electric chairs or ineffective cyanide tablets. In a satiric comic dating from 1994, Newsweek portrayed a man awaiting death in the gas chamber. He is thinking to himself, that had he known execution to be so painless, he would have killed from an earlier date. Execution can never be made humane through science.-New York Times. The eighth amendment to the U.S. Constitution strictly prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. In recent years, science has provided what is thought to be a less cruel form of execution. Sitting upon death row, waiting to die is cruel. Every time we execute someone, we as a society sink to the same level as the killer. How can we hope to end barbaric practices, if we still stand in acceptance of them?In theory, the death penalty serves as a deterrent for further murders. Many politicians argue that executions prevent heinous crime, while virtually no criminologists agree. Some studies indicate that the crime rate actually increases following an execution. In Louisiana, for example, during the summer of 1987, eight people were executed. In that same period, the murder rate in New Orleans rose 16.9%, the highest the area had seen in years. Statistics also indicate that those states with the death penalty do not have a lower rate of crime than those that do not.In the endless arguments over capital punishment, questions of the agony suffered by the victims and their families are raised. The end result always produces one more dead body, one more set of grieving parents, and one more cemetery slot. Those whom support the death penalty feel that the only vindication the victims family can receive is to execute th...
