Imagine living your life for the next 10 years in a 6 by 12 foot cell, 23 hours a day. That is what a person on death row faces, and is then brought into a small room, where you sit strapped down to reinforced chair. A helmet is then put on your head and moments later 1,000 volts of electricity surges into your flesh, your body shakes and gurgling noises rise from your throat. One minute later the electricity stops, and after a short period of time the electricity rushes into your body again, except now its at 24 hundred volts. Smoke begins to rise from the helmet and then there is a foul, sweet smell of frying flesh. Many minutes after it started it stops, a murder has taken place. I am against capital punishment.
During the past three decades the issue of capital punishment has been very controversial in the United States. During 1972 the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Furman v. Georgia that the death penalty was unconstitutional because it was a form of cruel and unusual punishment under the eighth amendment. However, this decision did not last long; in July 1975 the Supreme Court ruled that capital punishment did not violate any parts of the Constitution. The decision was reversed when new methods of execution were introduced and executions started again. Since then 180 inmates have been executed. .
Under our current U.S. Constitution, which has been around for over 200 years, inmates of the government cannot be subjected to any kind of punishment, which is considered cruel and unusual. However all the forms of capital punishment that the government uses are questionable as to whether or not they are legal according to the Constitution. Forms of capital punishment that are still used in the United States include hanging, firing squad, gas chamber, electrocution, and lethal injection. With hangings a rope is wrapped around a persons neck then they are dropped from a certain height with the other end of the rope attached to something above them.
