Long before the first prisons were built there was the penalty of death. The Greeks and Hebrews developed a specific ritual for execution by stoning. Death by a thousand cuts was popular in China where small bits of flesh were carved away over a period of days or weeks. In the 19th century India elephants were sometimes used to make executions especially excruciating. While in England people convicted of capital crimes were hung, disemboweled, and quartered. For a century, animals also found their way into the gallows; in 1396 a pig accused of fatally injuring a child was dressed in the suit of a man and publicly hanged.

Nearly four centuries have passed since the first documented lawful execution on American soil in 1608. The early ways o

 Just Revenge; http://faculty.mckenna.edu/mcostanzo/death_penalty/chapter.htm (8/25/2000)

f execution were adapted from the British, even though the colonies were thought to be more humane. In England burning at the stake, quartering, and disemboweling were still common place, hanging was the choice method of killing convicts in the colonies. However, the public hangings still had the festive carnival atmosphere as they did in Europe. Lynching was an unofficial form of execution and was widespread in early America. 1,540 documented lynchings were performed at its peak in the 1890's, during that time 1,098 authorized government executions were performed.

The death penalty has gone under much scrutiny and inspection. Its history, cost, racial discrimination, and the difficulties we may or may not face by having it instated is isolating us from our fellow allies. Other countries see capital punishment as an uncivil unmoral act but because of the controversy and mixed feelings of America and its citizens it has kept it instated. The death penalty is dividing our country from it's allies and because of this we as a country need to decide whether to fully support it or to abandon it as other countries have done.

As the new millennium approaches, the United States finds itself drifting into isolation because of the issue of capital punishment. Right now, no other issue is pushing the United States further apart from its allies and growing consensus of international law than the death penalty. The costs to the U.S. in terms of international stature and vital cooperation from other countries are enormous. 105 countries of the world have abolished the death penalty. The previous Russian President Boris Yeltsin in 1999 commuted over 700 death sentences to life in a step towards ending the death penalty and paving the way for Russia's admission to the council of Europe. The 40-nation council of Europe meeting in Strasbourg called for a ban on the death penalty.

It would seem that injecting someone with deadly chemicals would be less expensive than keeping them incarcerated for the rest of their life. The best studies on the cost of the death penalty show that it costs about two million dollars more per execution in a state with capital punishment than for a system that impo

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