Capital Punishment

When turning on the television to watch the daily news more than likely you will be bombarded with reports of brutal murders and other vicious acts committed. It is a rarity to view the news without hearing of such inhumane actions. Murder, rape, robbery, and other violent crimes have now been implemented into our society and the rate of crime is rapidly increasing. Since the first European settlers arrived in America, the death penalty has been accepted as just punishment for various offenses. The English Penal Code, which applied to the British colonies, listed fourteen capital offenses, but actual practice varied from colony to colony. In the Massachusetts Bay Colony, thirteen crimes warranted the death penalty: idolatry, witchcraft, blasphemy, rape, statutory rape, kidnapping, perjury in a trial involving a possible death sentence, rebellion, murder, assault in sudden anger, adultery, and sodomy. So how should the perpetrators of these violent crimes be punished? Some people ...