The Death Penalty The death penalty is a form of capital punishment used to terminate people who have been convicted of capital crimes. The conversation on death penalty has been very prominent in recent conversation. For many years people have argued and debated about whether or not the practice of death penalty should be discontinued. Between the years 1977 and 2009, 1,188 people have been legally executed by lethal injection, electrocution, gas chamber, hanging, and the firing squad. There have been several incidents in which the death penalty has gone wrong including botched injections and the killing of innocent people. However, despite these horrible mistakes it has continued to be used. As of today thirty-one states legally carry out…show more content… They go on by suggesting that sentencing an inmate to death is more cost efficient than keeping them imprisoned to carry out the remainder of their life. Also, because of the possibilities of the inmate escaping, or nevertheless murdering again, Mull and Stewart believe that the death penalty is the best thing to do to refrain this from happening. In the last paragraph of the article the authors state: “I believe that there are some defendants who have earned the ultimate punishment our society has to offer by committing murder with aggravating circumstances present” (Mull and…show more content… This claim contradicts the argument that the authors are trying to prove. What this is saying is that two people can commit the exact same crime, and depending on where the crime took place one person may get the death penalty and the other may only get Life in Prison. This is yet another reason why the death penalty is an inadequate form of punishment. Additionally, the authors suggest that the death penalty is rarely carried out, however according to the Death Penalty Information Center, there have been 1,418 executions in the United States since the death penalty was reactivated in 1976. Of these legal executions, 1,512 took place in the Southern region of the Nation, also known as the Bible belt ("Facts about the Death Penalty"). As most of this region identifies with Christianity we should take the sixth commandment of the Holy Bible into consideration: “Thou shall not
