Capital punishment is the infliction of the death penalty on persons convicted of a Killing convicted felons has been one of the most widely practicedforms of criminal punishment in the United States. Currently, the states that do not practice thedeath penalty are Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota,New Jersey, North Dakota, Ohio, Rhode Island, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. However, for theremaining states that do practice the death penalty, it has been a topic of debate for many years. There are two parties who argue over its many points, including whether or not it is a fitting andadequate punishment, whether or not it acts as a drawback to crime and whether or not it ismorally wrong. These two classes of people can be grouped together as the retentionists, or theproponents, and the abolitionists, or the opponents (Americana 596). For the retentionists, the main reasons they are in support of the death penalty are to take revenge, to advise others, andto punish. They are most concerned with the protection of society from dangerous criminals. Inspite of all this, the death penalty is not a good form of criminal punishment for many reasons: itis morally wrong, it does not act as a drawback for crime, it is irreversible and can be inflictedupon people who are innocent, it is more expensive than imprisonment and those who areconvicted commonly use the costly process of appealing the decision.People that favor the death penalty agree that capital punishment is a relic ofbarbarism, but as murder itself is barbaric, they contend that death is a fitting punishment for it(Jayewardene 87). Retentionists are most often subscribers to the an eye for an eye principleand feel that execution is the only way to satisfy the public as well as themselves. An exampleof this principle is someone stealing money from you then the same thing happen to them. Retentionists feel almost the same way about murderer...
