Capital punishment is broken. The death penalty has been accused of being discriminatory, selective and selective. This system has been statistically proven to be racially biased; claims innocent lives and ignores mental illness. Benjamin Franklin once said, “It is better for a hundred guilty people to escape than for one innocent person to suffer.” The following addresses the pros and cons of the death penalty, how effective it is, and why it should be implemented throughout the United States. The purpose of the death penalty is to punish a crime, to prevent the criminal from repeating the act, and to deter future potential criminals. Capital punishment is one of the oldest forms of criminal punishment, dating back almost 2000 years BC. There are four key points in the reasoning for the death penalty: intimidation, deterrence, restitution, and retribution. to which a criminal is exposed. An incarcerated criminal cannot harm the safety of the public but can harm the safety of other prisoners. An executed criminal can never commit a crime again. The penalty equivalent to the death penalty is life imprisonment without parole. When a citizen is stripped of his rights and told that he will spend the rest of his life in prison, there is nothing to live for, nothing to look forward to, and nothing to stop the criminal from breaking the law again. Enforcement over incarceration ensures that this problematic human being will never intimidate or harm a citizen, prison guard, or inmate. Deterrence is a technique applied to informed people. Deterrence is aimed at people who use logic in their daily lives. The threat of extreme punishment dete...... middle of paper ...... not be recruited. In this form of execution, five law enforcement riflemen must be used. Four of the five riflemen will have bullets; a rifleman will have a blank pistol. This will ensure that the team does not know who fired the fatal shot(s). Since 1776, when this nation was born, more people have been executed by hanging than by any other measure. A rope must be boiled and tensioned before use to ensure its strength. To determine the height of fall and the length of a rope it is necessary to use a table of fall distances, developed by the US Army. Yes, capital punishment is broken. Problems happen with every idea. There will never be a perfect solution to this problem or any other problem. The main issue is not to kill someone who has not harmed others. As Benjamin Franklin once said, “It is better for a hundred guilty to escape than for one innocent to suffer.”