Once a jury has convicted a criminal, they go to the second part of the trial, the punishment phase. If the jury recommends the death penalty and the judge agrees then the criminal will face some form of execution, lethal injection is the most common form used today. There was a period from 1972 to 1976 that capital punishment was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Their reason for this decision was that the death penalty was "cruel and unusual punishment" under the Eighth Amendment. The decision was reversed when new methods of execution were introduced.

Capital punishment is a difficult issue and there are as many different opinions as there are people. Different forms of the death penalty are more humane than others. In the 1920's people decided that lethal gas, or the gas chamber, w

Electrocution was also done away with in Florida. In it's place came lethal injection. The 74 year old oak chair was banished after the second messed up execution in seven years. Jesse Tafero's in 1990 and Pedro Medina's on march 25. These cases were the basis for the accusation that the electric chair was cruel and unusual punishment. In both executions, flames shot from the prisoners' heads when the current of electricity was turned on. The chair's head gear was blamed for this problem. "It was brutal, terrible. It was a burning-alive, literally," said attorney Michael Minerva after witnessing the Medina execution. After all this happened the question of what would replace the electric chair if and when Florida got rid of it came up.

The answer to that was lethal injection, a mix of drugs that sends a person in to unconsciousness and then kills them. This was described as similar to putting an animal down. This was a method already employed by 32 states and seemed like the best solution to the problem at hand. Of the 32 states already using lethal injection Florida Corrections Commission surveyed 17 of these states. The majority of these states said that they switched to "the needle", lethal injection because it is the most humane form of capital punishment. Florida took polls showing the death penalty was strongly supported. Texas, the first to use lethal injection in 1982, and other states has had this form of capital punishment tested in court time and time again and it has always come out as being valid and humane to the victim.

Many people attended the execution of Gee Jon, some of who were physicians and scientists. They came to try and prove that this was a humane way of killing a man. Putting forth this as a quick and painless method of execution. Several of them said they thought it the most merciful form yet devised. This is what happened to the victim according to A. Huftaker, E. E. Hammer, and Major D. A. Turner of the Army Medical Reserve Corps., The man went unconscious after his first breath of the vaporized acid (liquid hydrocyanic acid). Since the man was unconscious he did not feel any pain and died almost instantly. There for the death penalty was for that time a humane way of killing someone.

as more humane than death by electrocution. Nevada was the first state to adopt the gas chamber as their form of execution.

Botched executions can be the result of mistakes by the executioners,

Some common words found in the essay are:
Willie Francis, Fred Leuchter, Executions America, Eighth Amendment, , Michael Minerva, Corrections Commission, United Sates, Pedro Medina's, Death Bill, lethal injection, death penalty, capital punishment, unusual punishment, form execution, cruel unusual, cruel unusual punishment, electric chair, gas chamber, death penalty humane, penalty humane, firing squad, injection humane form, lethal injection humane, using lethal injection,
Approximate Word count = 1642
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)