Capital Punishment Is An Irreversible Process - 1923 Words

Carreon 1 Capital punishment is defined as â€Å"the practice of killing people as punishment for serious crimes† (Meriam-Webster Dictionary). Crimes that carry the death penalty are classified as capital offenses and include murder, terrorism, espionage, and genocide. In order for a person to be sentence to death, first, they have to go through a two-step process in the justice system known as a bifurcated trial. The first step of the trial is proving that the person committed the crime, and the second step is determining if the death penalty will be imposed. Once both requisites have been accomplished by the prosecution team, and the person has been found guilty by the jurors, the convicted person gets sent to prison to await the execution†¦show more content†¦Whichever way a person might look at capital punishment, one thing is certain, the death penalty has been around for centuries, and has evolved from brutal methods, to what might seem like a more humane way of conducting the executions. Back in time, â€Å"the ancient Greeks used poison from hemlock trees to Carreon 2 execute criminals, while the Romans used beheadings, clubbing, strangling, drawing and firing, or feeding to the lions† (Harr, Hess and Orthmann). Currently in the United States, the allowed methods of execution are, lethal injection, electrocution, gas chamber, hanging, and firing squad. From the year 1976 to 2016 the number of inmates that have been executed in the United States is 1,436, and currently in the year 2016, there has been fourteen people put to death (Death Penalty Information Center). The highest number of executions occurred in the year 1999, with an average of 98 inmates that were put to death via lethal injection. The latest case of an execution is the case of a Texas man, Charles Flores was executed in June 2, 2016. Flores was convicted of killing Elizabeth Black back in 1999, and was in prison waiting to be executed for seventeen years (National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty). The state of Texas holds the