Capital Punishment

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Capital Punishment

In the past, people have invariably felt that if they had

been wronged in some way, it was his or her right to take

vengeance on the person that had wronged them. This mentality

still exists, even today, but in a lesser form because the law

has now outlined a person's rights and developed punishments that

conform to those rights, yet allow for the retribution for their

crime. However, some feel that those laws and punishments are

too lax and criminals of today take advantage of them, ie.

organized crime, knowing very well that the punishments for their

crime, whether it be murder, theft, or any other number of

criminal activities, will be so negligible that it may be well

worth their risk.

Although in the past, the number of crimes that were

subjected to capital punishment, defined simply as the death

penalty for a crime, were outrageous. Amendments were made to

reflect the changes in the society's views on the morality of

capital punishment. That resulted in the narrowing down of the

list of one hundred crimes to twelve, punishable by the death

penalty in 1833, and in 1869 it was cut down yet again to just

three: treason, rape, and murder because of violent nature of

these crimes. These crimes, even today, are still viewed as

violent and should be punished with the highest degree of

discipline available to achieve justice.

After much public pressure, capital punishment was suspended

on a trial run in 1967. This proved to be ineffective, because

even though the law stipulated that crimes such as treason or the

murder of law enforcement agents, were still to be subjected to

the death penalty, the federal cabinet continued to commute those

criminals from death to life sentences, hence the law was not

being followed and justice was not being served. This soon was

followed with capital punishment's abolishment in 1976, as a

formal declaration of what was already happening or rather what

was not happening. It is felt that because of this and the fact

that there has not been an execution since 1967, that today's

current form of punishments are no longer a sufficient deterrent

for such serious crimes and have contributed to a ever rising

crime rate.

So, this is where the real issue of whether or not capital

punishment should exist begins and such a controversial issue
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