America and the Death Penalty

            America's view on their justice system is very unclear, "we must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions." (Ronald Reagan). Some insist that the death penalty acts to prevent a capital crime, while others feel that it has no effect whether a capital crime is still committed. Is it right or is it wrong to take the life of someone who has committed a capital crime? The answer to that question are these questions: does it depend on the case, does the sanity of the person determine whether the death penalty is just, or will the jury's biased ways determine whether the murderer's fate will be enforcing justice or just another corrupt way of the world? The death penalty is a topic that lies between the lines of opinions and feelings based on each person's culture. The central view on the death penalty ratifies that the world may advance in their knowledge of capital punishment, but there will never be a final dispute or resolution to the understanding, acknowledgement, or ending to the right or wrong of the death penalty due to the difference in in culture upbringing.
             The use of the death penalty dates all the way back 1700 B.C. when Iraq implemented The Code of Hammurabi, which was a legal document that contained the first known death penalty laws. In the 1600s is when this ultimate punishment reached the United States when "the first colonists came to the United States, they brought the British penal system across the ocean with them. A colonist in Virginia could be executed for crimes as trivial as stealing grapes, killing chickens, or trading with the Indians, but the first documented execution in the new colonies was for a far more serious offense. In the Jamestown colony of Virginia in 1608, Captain George Kendall was hanged for the capital offense of treason.