Death Penalty Essay, Research Paper

Capital Punishment has been practiced around the world for many centuries. What is Capital Punishment? Capital Punishment is a state-sanctioned murder that is used to punish a criminal for a variety of different heinous crimes that he or she might have committed in our society. The idea of Capital Punishment is to ideally curb the behavior of a murderer or a lawbreaker so this behavior might not come from other people. Does this work? Is Capital Punishment the right way to deal with serious crime in our society and is it effective as a deterrent? A deterrent is something that helps to stop others who may commit some of the same crimes.

During the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries also known as the colonial era, executions were a celebration of the community where the good citizens would unite against evil in a social gathering. Executions such as hangings took place on a normal basis in the thirteen colonies. Newspapers would report executions in great detail as well as the violence that would break out from the unruly crowds. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries people were often executed for less sever crimes such as stealing and forgery. There were many different ways to execute a criminal in these good old days. In England only women were burned at the stake, Beheading was only for treason, disemboweling, which is cutting out the criminals intestines was for counterfeiting, Hanging was the most common in this time. As many as one hundred thousand people came to view the execution of the criminal. On the morning a hanging the prisoner is brought to the scaffold, masked, and hanged by the neck until deceased. The body would either be left there or be publicly dissected by doctors.

?During a three day drinking and drug binge Karla Faye Tucker and a male accomplice sneaked into a Houston apartment with the intent to steal motorcycle parts and for no reason at all the murder of two innocent people happened instead? (Texas monthly 1). The victims were brutally hacked to death with a pick ax. ?Each victim suffered more than twenty blows? (Texas monthly 1). ?Karla Faye Tucker to hack at the victims long after they were dead and left the pick ax sticking out of the woman?s chest? (Texas monthly 1). She and here accomplice may have never been caught had they not bragged to their low-life friends of the horrible crimes they had committed.

?Karla Faye Tucker was convicted to the murders and sentenced to the death penalty at age twenty-four? (Texas monthly 1). She was sent to women?s death row in nineteen eighty-four. During her stay at death row she found Christ through a prison ministry and put herself to good works such as they were available. ?She even married a minister by the name of Dana Brown, though the two were always separated by a pane of Plexiglas? (Texas monthly 1). She also became extremely spiritual. It seems that jail has changed this creepy guilty criminal into a sunny, innocent, nice person. One should wonder if Karla Faye Tucker was sincere in her belief in God or was she just putting on an act to make people think that she has changed and that they should not put her to death.

Whether Karla Faye Tucker was sincere or not she still got the attention of the whole world. ?People such as Pope John Paul the second, National Council of Churches national secretary Joan Campbell Brown, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) president Richard Hamm, and United Church of Christ president Paul Sherry all sent letters to Texas governor George W. Bush? (Christianity Today 1). In these letters they were pleading with the governor not to kill Tucker because she has changed. Demonstrators and vigils also attracted hundreds of protesters and spectators that were against the decision to put Karla Faye Tucker to death. In Huntsville on February the third Governor George W. Bush Decided to carry out the exicution despit the pleas of the various religious leaders.