In the United States the moral debate over capital punishment has always had a distinctly religious flavor. Those on both sides have used both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament as authority for their beliefs. People against the death penal

Some of those who support the death penalty defend it also as a cost-effective alternative to life imprisonment. These people think that it costs less to have a criminal executed then to keep them imprisoned for the rest of their lives, when in reality it actually costs more to execute them. A 1982 study in New York concluded that the average capital murder trial and the first stage of appeals cost U.S. taxpayers 1.8 million dollars. It is estimated that this is less than it would cost to incarcerate someone for one hundred years.

Lastly, the argument on whether capital punishment is a "cruel and unusual" punishment is always brought up when killing a criminal. Many people believe that the methods used to execute criminals are extremely cruel to be brought upon a human being. What about the methods used in the United States today - lethal injection, electrocution, gas, and the firing squad? Each was originally proposed as being more humane than the methods used before it. Each has been hailed as quick and virtually painless by its defenders. However, each has also been protested as cruel and unusual. Clearly none of these methods is foolproof. Electrocution may or may not be relatively painless when death is virtually immediate; but several electrocutions in the 1980s - in at least three different states - required more than one charge to kill and at least one victim took ten minutes to die.

No matter what type of execution is made up next, there will always be some argument against it of why it is "cruel and unusual", that is why in today's age it is hard to judge, whether the death penalty should exist, with all sorts of arguments that seem right but just might be wrong.

of being executed for his or crime. This argument has been around for a good while, and has somewhat lost its effect. The deterrent theory is undermined by the fact that executions are carried out in secret. Although news reporters are allowed to attend executions, they are not allowed to film the execution, even if the condemned person agrees to being filmed. As executions have become more common, they are less frequently reported in the media, and thereby losing a good portion of whatever deterrent effect they might have had. Therefore, the deterrent theory has been replaced with a stronger argument that capital punishment is justified on retributive grounds and will certainly prevent a killer from ever being released from prison and killing again.

The Courts decisions in both cases reflected the controversy and mixed feelings among the society at th

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Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)