Bringing Back Capital Punishment For my English assignment I was asked to consider the question of whether or not capital punishment should be brought back. I will focus on America because it is the closest to our style of culture. Capital punishment refers to the taking of the life of someone who has been found guilty of committing a crime. Some of the earlier methods were crucifixion, boiling in oil, drawing and quartering. , impalement, decapitation, burning alive, crushing, tearing apart, stoning and drowning. In the United States the death penalty is currently authorized in five ways: hanging, electrocution (introduced by New York State in 1890), gas chamber (adopted in Nevada in 1923), the firing squad used only in Utah, or l lethal injection (introduced in 1977 by Oklahoma). In most countries that still retain the death penalty for some crimes, hanging or firing squad are the preferred methods of execution. In some countries that strictly adhere to the traditional practices of Islam, beheading or stoning is still occasionally used as punishment. Capital punishment is still used in some states of America, South Africa, China and Russia. The most common crimes committed are treason and murder. William Kemmler was the first man to be executed by electric chair, at Auburn Prison in New York, on August 7, 1890. Kemmler was convicted of killing his girlfriend Tillie Ziegler with an ax in 1889. [IMAGE]The electric chair it is mainly used in the United States to execute prisoners sentenced to death. The image shows a New York State chair, where and...... middle of paper ...... is cruel and inhumane, but can sometimes be justified. For example, a recent story on the news was about the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. In this case I think the death penalty should have been used against Ian Huntley, the man who killed these children. Below is a photo of the two girls before they were killed, the man who killed them, and his girlfriend who withheld the information.[IMAGE]Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells James Bulger RIP This is a photo of James Bulger, a two-year-old boy who was killed by two ten-year-old boys in 1993. They beat him until he died and threw him onto railway lines to make it look like an accident. opinion that you should not take someone's life even if they killed someone. Only God has the right to take a life", the lord gives and takes"