History of the Death Penalty

The cornerstone of the modern civilized society is its laws, and more importantly, the enforcement of those laws for the common good. Without law enforcement both as a deterrent to potential law breakers and as a means of punishing the guilty and removing them from society because of their potential to harm others, no peace or order could exist. In the cases of those individuals whose crimes are beyond heinous-such as mass murder, genocide, and the like- and their future possibilities of committing more crimes of an even worse nature are even remote, the option of putting those individuals to death has been utilized by humans for as long as recorded history has existed, and theoretically, even before the dawn of recorded history itself (Hood, 1996). When looking at the death penalty from an international, and historical perspective, one wonders how the idea of a death penalty got started, how effective it has been over the generations, and in the modern arena of debate, whether or not it is a useful tool in the present day, or an outdated form of murder in itself that should be relegated to the past. In this paper, these facets of the death penalty and more will be explored.

Where Did the Death Penalty Begin?