death panalty
...jected which include sodium thiopental, this makes the inmate unconscious, Pancuronium bromide, to release the muscles and causes the inmate to stop breathing, and the last dosage would be a toxic agent which is not used by all states (Bedau 43). The gas chamber is an air tight room were the inmate is strapped to a chair and hydrogen cyanide gas is released causing the skin to turn purple. Death by the electric chair is a method were the inmate is strapped to a chair and around 2000 volts are jolted for several seconds into his body (O'Shea 20). During this process the prisoner would drow out blood, eyes would pop dangling down on his or her cheeks and the sound of burning skin fills the air like beacon or ham is cooking. To prevent the eyeballs from popping they would strap the inmates eyes. The majority of people that are executed are serial killers and mass murders. Juveniles have also been executed. One of the youngest juvenile to be executed was 14 year old George Spinney who was convicted of killing two young girls according to http://www.angelfire.com/al4juveniles in 1944. . The first known woman to be executed is Martha Place in march 20, 1899 for murdering her husband. During the Salem witch trials women were often hanged or burned to death for being accused of being wiches. Women are less likely to be executed than men because studies show that women are less violent then men, only about 2% of the people on death row are women (O'Shea 78). Even though European were abolishing the death penalty, the U.S. retained the death penalty, but established limitations on capital punishment. In 1977, the United States Supreme Court held in Coker v. Georgia that the death penalty is an unconstitutional punishment for the rape of an adult woman when the victim was not killed. Other limits to the death penalty followed in the next decade. In 1986, the Supreme Court banned the execution of insane person. The Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment does not prohibit the death penalty for crimes committed at age sixteen or seventeen. In 1994, President Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act that expanded the federal death penalty to some 60 crimes, 3 of which do not involve murder (W. Schabas 106). The reasons for the death penalty are espionage, treason, and drug trafficking in large amounts. In response to the Oklahoma City Bombing, President Clinton signed the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (W. Schabas 110). The Act, which affects both state and federal prisoners, restricts review in federal courts by establishing tighter filing deadlines, limiting the opportunity for hearings, and allowing only a single habeas corpus filing in federal court. Today, more than half of the countries in the international community have abolished the death penalty completely, for ordinary crimes. However, over 90 countries still use the death penalty, including China, Iran, and the United States, all of which ranked among the highest for internatio...