In most of the industrialized world, capital punishment is not used to punish criminals. Even South Africa, once notorious for its many executions, is giving up capital punishment. However, it is still used in the United States. The capital punishment debate in the United States has raged for almost four hundred years. Supporters of capital punishment often cite its roles as deterrent and retribution as reasons for their support of the death penalty. Opponents of capital punishment cite its arbitrariness and finality as reasons for their opposition against the death penalty. Because capital punishment can lead to an unequal application of justice, sometimes to the point of executing innocent persons, no amount of argument from its supporters should prevent it from being abolished.
In the past the death penalty has been used as a deterrent, a public spectacle that was to frighten and scare the population into submission, hence the guillotine. Today, people still feel that this is true, but evidence shows that this universally accepted idea is indeed a false one. There is no hard evidence that capital punishment is a preventative of violent crime. The Eighth Amendment to the Constitution protects us from the use of excessive bail and fines. It also protects us from cruel and unusual punishment. In 1972 the courts ruled in favor of Furman, in Furman vs. Georgia, on the grounds that the death penalty was cruel and unusual punishment. Unfortunately, the decision was revoked in 1976, a mere four years later. There was no time taken to see if the change would affect the rate of violent crimes committed in the United States today.
Even though the retentionists pose some interesting arguments, I myself feel that the abolitionist perspective contains much stronger backing and more reasons for opposition, the first of which is that the death penalty is wrong morally because it is the cruel and inhumane taking of a human life. The methods by which executions are carried out can involve physical torture. "Electrocution has on occasion caused extensive burns and needed more than one application of electric current to kill the condemned.” To many opponents, capital punishment is a euphemism for legally killing people and no one, not even the State, has the authority to play God.
Contrary to popular belief, the death penalty does not act as a deterrent to crime. "Expert after expert and study after study have emphasized and emphasized the lack of correlation between the threat of the death penalty and the occurrence of violent crime.” Isaac Ehrlich's study on the deterrent effect of capital punishment in America reveals this. It spans twenty-five years, 1957-1982, and shows that in the first year the study was conducted there were 8,060 murders in 1957 and 65 executions. However, in the last year of the study, there were 22,520 murders committed and 1 execution performed. The absence of deterrence is clearly shown.
The death penalty is irrevocable. "In case of a mistake, the executed prisoner cannot be given another chance. Justice can miscarry. In the last hundred years there have been more that 75 documented cases of wrongful conviction of criminal homicide. The death sentence was carried out in eight of these cases.”. Undoubtedly many other cases of mistaken conviction and execution occurred and remain undocumented. A prisoner discovered to be blameless can be freed; but neither release nor compensation is possible for a corpse.

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