Thirty-one states to this day still provide the death penalty as an option to the judge. These states include Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming. There are many different crimes that can be assigned the death penalty but most do include murder. Some of the other punishable crimes limited to homicides are assassination of federal government members, murder at airports, murder of a witness, etc. They all pretty much come back to the same subject matter of murder. Non-death related crimes that can result in death penalty is drug trafficking large amounts of drugs, treason or espionage. Crimes such as aircraft hijacking, destruction of federal facilities, sexual abuse, rape, mass destruction using weapons, and many more can all result in capital punishment if they result in death of the victim. The most executions since the reintroduction of capital punishment in 1976 is Texas at 474 and counting. The least could be many states that only have one victim.
In my opinion the capital punishment could be used for other major crimes other than murder. The only thing other than taking someones life would be torturing someone. I think even if a criminal tortures someone to a high extend they should be caught and killed. Torture could be one of those things worse than death, where you just wish you were dead. That should be punishable up to capital punishment. I think the way capital punishment is imposed is all three of the reasons, legality, morality and emotion. All of them come into play during a sentencing. Some people let their emotions overwhelm them and can be angry or sad or a mixture of both and of course want the perpetrator to die, but then it comes down to the legal part of it whether or not the crime was committed to punish to that extend and whether or not they have the right guy. Like we talked about earlier, the wrongfully convicted.
How you respond to this agree with it or disagree with it?