CAPITAL PUNISHMENT AND THE DEATH PENALTY 6
Capital Punishment and the Death Penalty a Global Issue
Michelle Bergos
Introduction to Corrections 140
October 11, 2016
Jason Skeens
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Abstract
As this is and has been a controversial subject for centuries in much of the world, the question is, what human being has the right and responsibility to settle the issue? In the Code of King Hammaurabi of Babylon, circa the Eighteenth Century B.C. the death penalty was first established and codified for twenty-five different crimes but was also a punishment of even earlier times. King Hammaurabi enacted his set of rules or laws to govern the people in ?his? rapidly expanding empire which by the time of his death included a large percentage of modern-day Iraq. My objective for this essay is to …show more content…
Since the historic 1972 Supreme Court ruled that Georgia?s death penalty statute could be interpreted as ?cruel and unusual? punishment had an effect on death penalty laws in all states that still practiced them prompting a suspension of the punishment nationwide until the 10 year moratorium on executions ended on January 17, 1977. Over 1300 executions have occurred in the United States since 1977, one year after the Supreme Court reiterated its approval of the use of the death penalty dependent on new statutes drafted by our individual and separated states. It appears that we, through our elected officials, have a tendency to make and alter the rules as we go, whatever suits whomever in the moment or based on the current political platforms. It?s not only unfair but, if as I believe God created the world and everything within it then who are we as people to interfere in the governing of life and