Capital What?

As Americans, we view life as precious, sacred, and above all else the single most important thing to protect. But what happens when the thing we value most is stripped away from us without any sound or notice? Pain. Revenge is for seen therefore, nothing else but and eye for and eye will satisfy the demand for it. But is taking a precious life for another to justify the demands for misdeeds the correct way to perform properly? The founding fathers of the United States would have to say other wise. Upon writing the constitution, Tomas Jefferson gave all of man kind inalienable rights, rights that can never be taking away, “life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” these three elements formed the foundation to this country and the way we view freedom. Although capital punishment, or the death penalty, justifies the demand for murder, it should be abolished because it was and will forever be unconstitutional.
To understand where we are now, we have to understand where we have been. It’s believed that King Hammurabi of Babylon, during the early 18th century B.C, was the first to establish death as an appropriate ends for punishment. This was then adopted later by many other civilizations such as the Romans with death by beating, burning, crucifixion, drowning and impalement. Although these seemed very harsh for uncivilized civilizations, it was a most common practice in the entire world. It wasn’t till about the 19th century that Henry VIII of England issued punishment for crimes small and large to be death by hanging. This “new and improved” way of capital punishment carried on into the U.S. for about two hundred years until the last hanging of 22-year-old Rainey Bethea on August 14, 1936. During this time, however, techniques to capital punishment like the electrical chair in 1889 were adopted and punishments like beheading, and burning alive was abolished due to “cruel and un usual punishment.” During the 1930’s executions in the U.S. hit an all time high with an average on 167 deaths per year. This statistic seems shocking, but fortunately, it declined until it reached 37 deaths in the year 2008. Use of the electrical chair lasted until 2008, where Nebraska, became the last and final state to abolish it due to its cruel and unusual stature. Unfortunately, this was not the end of capital punishment. Lethal injection, or death by poisonous chemicals in the blood stream, become the most common way to kill prisoners from its first appearance in 1977 to our current day (ProQuest). It was supposed to be a better alternative to hanging, the gas chamber, fireing squad and elocution that was cleaner, clinical, painless more human and therefore a more acceptable form of capital punishment. unfortunately, The controversial issue that stands today is that is lethal injection, like other capital punishment techniques used in the past, a cruel and unsafe way to execute a person?
To know where you stand on this issue, you have to understand what exactly lethal injection is and what its procedures are there of. Webster’s dictionary defines it to be a liquid that is introduced into something forcefully resulting in death. This liquid, or sometimes referred to as a “cocktail”, is currently used in almost all states in the US as a means to capital punishment. This three drug cocktail contains sodium patroulm-wich knocks the patient out resulting in unconsciousness, pancruronium bromide-which causes muscle paralysis, and potassium chloride-which stops the heart ending the person’s life due to cardiac arrest. Unfortunately potassium chloride can possibly wear off before the person’s heart stops resulting in extreme physical and mental anguish. The worst part is that because of the other two drugs used with in the cocktail, the victim is bound in a chemical straight jacket and cannot tell anyone that he or she is in pain. In fact, amnesty international notes that TX has banded the use of these chemicals on animals because of the extreme pain they can cause. This kind of mistake in procedures is not an impossible thing to occur. For example, the execution of angel Diaz added urgency to this case. Tom Head, writer for about dot com on guide to civil liberties, said, “Lethal injection executions generally end within 15 minutes, with the inmate unconscious after the first 3-5 minutes; Diaz' took 34, and he was conscious for at least the first 25. A spokesperson for the Florida Department of Corrections initially claimed that Diaz felt no pain during the execution, but a coroner's investigation belied that claim.” so was Diaz tortured to death? Head goes on to explain, “Eyewitness reports indicate that Diaz was still moving and attempting to speak (or, perhaps, scream) more than twenty minutes into the execution, suggesting that he was still conscious and in pain. Diaz would have remained partially paralyzed by the injection of pavulon, a muscle relaxant administered shortly after the pentothol. His death was almost certainly slow and excruciatingly painful--and with his body frozen by the pavulon, he would have had no way of expressing that pain.” University of Miami surgery professor Leonidas G. Koniaris added, "This raises the possibility people are being tortured and you can't see it because they are paralyzed… I'm not sure a civilized society should be doing this."