Death penalty, commonly refer to as capital punishment, is the legally authorized

killing of someone as punishment for a crime (Oxford Dictionaries, 2017). In this

paper, one will trace and inquire into the early historical account of capital
punishment, then proviide ones stance on the matter.

Throughout the world, in the early stages of societies, the man committing homicide
was killed by the "avenger of blood" on behalf of the family of the man killed
(Bowers, 1913, p. 2). For centuries, the act of retaliation and vengence was the
custom and practice for these early societies. In the region of what the Greeks
called, the land between the rivers, the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, Mesopatamia,
around the year 1754 B.C., during the reign of King Hamuribi of Babylon there is a
drastic change to this practice lawlessly taking of another's life. Egyptologist
Gustave Jequier with his crew, in 1901, in their escavation found the diorite stela
containing the law code of Hamuribi (History Of Information, 2017). Carved on the
top of the stela is a picture of, none other than King Humuribi himself reciving
the law code directly from the Gods. Inscribed beneath this are legal decisions
covering family law, criminal law, and civil law. The code is primary concerned
with how a transgressor should compensate a victim. Crimes where compensation is
not possible, alternative includes legal retaliation, at its extreme, death. "A
wide variety of crime are punishable by death, which includ: theft, buying or
selling stolen goods, kidnapping, harboring fugitives slaves, and disorderly
conduct at tavern" (Thompson, 2016, p. 128-129). Let use illustrate here by
providing a few examples: "A builder could be put to death if his building
collapsed and resulted in the death of the owner or the owner's son. In most
cases, the manner is not specified, but in some cases it is. A person caught
looking during a fire ws to be thrown into the fire. Drowning was the penalty for
adultery and various other moral transgression" (Thompson, 2016, p. 129).

From the fertile crescent and birth of civilization of Mesopatamia, we now turn our
attention to the birth place western philosophy, science and democracy; namely
Greece. The key historical figure here is Draco, the first Greek law-giver of the
7th century B.C. The year is 621 B.C. when Draco wrote, what today is known as the
Draconian Code; the first known body of written law for the ancient Greek city of
Athens. From its entirety, surviving tody is the Draconian Code that pertains to
homicide. The Draconian Code, in essence, prescribe the penalty of death for
nearly every offenses, with the inclusion of minor offenses. To this day, the term
draconian is used to describe laws that are considered extremely harsh (Thompson,
2016, p. 82).

From the city states, polis, of Greece, we venture now to the holy land. Our focus
here is the biblical text; sacred to Christianity, in part revere in Islam, and the
first five books, the Torah, being the scriptural source fo history and law in
Judiasm. From the old testament, in the book of Genesis, under the Mosiac Code,
"the law of vengeancy was personified in the then prevailing doctrine, 'eye for an
eye, and a toth for a tooth'; in many instances that the rule being carried out
literally" (Bowers, 1913, p.2). Examples of this doctrine can be seen throughout
the biblical text in various passages. Take for instance, Genesis 9:6, "Whoso
sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." If we recalled the book of
Exodus in which Moses slain an Egyptian, from the King James Version of Exodus
2:11-12, "And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out
unto his brethren, adn looked on their burdens; and he spied an Egyptian smitting
an Hebrew, one of his brethen. And he looked this way and that way. And when he
saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian and hid hiim in the sand" ().
Returing to the different passages throughout the text, Mathew 25:52 states, "All
they that take the sword shall perish with the sword." Numbers 35:31 decalres,
"Take no satisfaction for the life of a murderer, which is guilty of death; but he
shall be surely put to death".

In our inquires, let us make a huge leap from the ancient account of capital
punishment to the period of the Dark to Middle Ages. During the Dark Ages of the
United Kingdom, under the rule of Saxon and Danish kings, the mode of capital
punishment most common were hanging, beheading, drowning, stoning, and
precipitation from rocks. In the Middle Ages, the many forms and types of torture
and execution method include: the wheel, breaking wheel or Catherine Wheel,
hangin--the gibet, press or crushing, burning--execution by fire, boil to death,
decapitation--the sword or the axe, quartering impalement, hang, drown and
quartered (Execution Methods). Historians tells us that William the Conqueror
would not permit the execution of the death sentence by hanging but by mutilation.
In the 1800s, death became the penalty for the most minor and trivial offenses; for
example the stealing, cutting of a tree or poaching deer, and robbing a rabbit
warren. The first alleviation of this came from the extension of the benefit of
clergy to ll perso who could read or recite the "neck verse", called so for its
power to save one's neck. The neck verse, here, refers to the first verse from
Psalm 51 of the Bible: "Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgression" (Britannica, Capital
Punishment, Roger Hood, 2017).

Here on forth, one will step aside from the historical account and provide where
one stands on the matter. In doing so one do not wish to do so by arguing one's
perspective, rather, by providing one's deeply held beliefs. Duke C. Bowers, in
his book "Life Imprisonment Vs The Death Penalty, best expressed the reason against
capital punishment when he argue that capital punishment should be abolished due to
the few innocent men who are executed. Restating a qoutation by Horace Greely,
Bowers writes,

"I dread human frailty. Men are prejudiced, passionate, and too often irrational.
Today they shout, 'Hosanna,' and tomorrow howl 'crucify him.' I would save them
fro the hasher consequences of their frenzy. Our Savior is by no means a solitary
example of the unjust execution of the innocent and just. Socrates, Cicero, Sir
Walter Raleigh, Algernon Sidney, John Huss, Michael Servetus, Louis XVI, the Due
d'Enghine, Marshal Ney, Riego, Nagi Sandor, Maximillian, are among the conspicuous
instances of victims of the las of blood. We have recorded instances of innocent
men convicted of murer on their own confession, of men convicted, sentenced and
hanged for offenses whereof they were in no wise guilty. Men may suffer unjustly,
even though death be stricken from the list of penalties, but to be imprisioned and
stripped of property is quite endurable compared with the infliction of an
ignominious death in the presence and for the delectation of a howling mob of
exulting human brutes. So long as man is lable to error I would have him reserves
the possiblity of correcting his mistakes and redressing the wrong he is misled
into perpetrating" (1913, p. 13).

Bowers continues,

"From experience and observation, we know that many men who are innocent are
convicted of various grades of crime, and that the greater the crime the more it
arouses the passion of men, and the more apt to procure an unjust verdict through
prejudice. Every lawyer knows how easy it is to convict the poor and friendless
fellow charged with crime, and how hard to convict the man who has the influence
and 'pull'. The present laws and practice foster extremes in both said instances.
Thus in the name of Justice, in order to vindicate a bararous law, the State itself
commits murder" (1913, 16).

If one is permitted, one would like to illustrates, in this paragraph, the

statments made above by Bowers by examining the historical account of witchcraft
and the European witch craze. As defined by the sixteeth century French political
theorist, witchcrath refers to the manner in which which individuals, or sorcerers,
by consorting with the devil, committed malefic actions and obtained their wishes.
From the late fifteenth century onward, European scholar sought to define
witchcraft by looking to ancient sources, primarily to the Bible to prove the
validity of these beliefs; thus setting the stage for the persecution of witches
during this period. Professor Teofilo F. Ruiz, from the history department of
UCLA, in his writing states that during the witch craze period in Western European
history, as many as 80,000 to 100,000 people, mostly elderly women were executed
because they were believed to be witches (2002). The changes in social, political
and economic conditions such as the surplus population of older women due to war
and other upheavals made widows and unmarried women who did not depend on men for
their livelihoods easy target for witchcraft persecution. Lower-class women were
prone to witchcraft persection for reasons that they worked endlessly, were often
abused, and had little to none property and political rights. Most prone are the
older women of the lower-class because of their level of vulnerability, old age and
primariliy because they are without protection or ties to men. Those accused or
charged with witchcraft and found guilty were overwhelmingly old women who belong
to the lower-class, often those who live on the outskirt of the city. Accusers are
divided evenly between men and women, typically the accusers are in-laws of those
whom they charged.

INSERT BLACKSTONE COMMENT.....

"The taking of life is too absolute, too irreversible, for one human being to
inflict it on another, even when backed by legal process."
-United Nation Security-General : Ban Ki-moon

"The death sentence is often imposed on less previledged individuals who do not
have sufficient access to effective legal representation."
-High Commissioner for Human Rights : Navi Pillay

Capital punishment, being the most severe punishment for any crime, here we shall
shift our perspective and look at killing from a purely religous perspective, the
Janism perspective and its reverence for life. The most significant contribution
of Janism is its practice of ahimsa; in its essence, to refrain from harming living
being, the inclusion of both plants and insects and all moving, growing and living
creatures. Jains believe that the world is composed of an infinite number of
material and spiritual substances, each with an infinite number of qualities and
manifestations. The Jains believe that karma is a material substance made of fine
particles that cling to the soul. When a soul acts, it attracts these particles,
which adhere to it, weigh it down, and stain it with a particular color according
to the karmas moral and spiritual quality. The objective of the Jain path is,
first, to stop the accumulation of new karma and, second, to eliminate old karma
that weighs down the soul. Jains are vegetarians and refuse to use leather or
other animal products. They avoid occupations that might cause harm to life forms
and some even sweep the pathway before them as they walk to avoid stepping on bugs.
The term Janism is derive from word 'jina' which translate to spiritual conqueror.
Devout Janists renounce their family, properties, clothing and any material
belonging in the aim of a higher truth; as a sign of renouncement they pull out
their hair by the roots. Janist discard their clothing and spent the remainin of
his day in the nude, for clothing like anything else is an attachment to the
physical/material world. For the remaining of their life, Janist practice intense
asceticism, including fasting, mortification, meditation and silence.