The death penalty is the ultimate punishment for people who commit crimes against mankind. There are people that say the death penalty is a cruel and unusual punishment, but I believe a person has to take the crime itself into consideration. A victim can not get up and defend him or herself, yet we have to listen to how the criminal's childhood made him into a murderer. The death penalty should be administered for particularly heinous crimes.
I do not think that the death penalty is a cruel and unusual punishment when the crime committed is unimaginable. A person who deliberately murders another person should not be able to get back out on the streets where he or she can murder again. It is in the news everyday where somebody has gone on a killing spree and our society has the tendency to give a person another chance. This is especially true if his or her defense is insanity. What really galls me is these convicted murderers have the right to appeal every court in the land when they have already been convicted by a jury of their peers. This is a waste of the taxpayer's money.
Our justice system seems to forget what the victims had to go through before their death. The deplorable acts the murderer made the victim do would be cruel and unusual to me. The victim did not ask to be treated so inhumanely. He or she is just that, victims. It is true people are innocent until they are proven guilty in a court of law, but to me the law protects the murderer and holds the victim accountable. Most of the punishment by death today is a painless procedure that is induced by drugs and probably a lot less painful than what they put their victims through.
The fact that a criminal even brings up his or her childhood to say the reason he or she kills is not excusable to me. Common sense tells a person what is right and what is wrong. There are many people today that grow up and do not kill human beings. I see no basis for this argument other than to give a jury a self-pity factor.