Capital Punishment

7/25/14

Phi 221 (651)

Capital punishment has been used in most societies since the start of history.  Also referred to as the death penalty, it can be defined as “the execution of a convicted criminal by the state for crimes known as capital crimes”. Capital crimes are considered the worst crimes someone can commit. Throughout early societies the accepted punishment for taking another mans life was your own life. Today's modern societies have started to back away from this punishment and it is a controversial topic that has sides split on the issue.

The article I chose to write an analysis on is titled, U.S. Edges Closer to Europe in Attitude Toward Capital Punishment, Experts Say. This article appeared in the New York Times on June 17, 2014 and was written by Brian Knowlton. The purpose of his article is to inform the reader, with factual information, on the topic of capital punishment. Knowltons thesis for the article states, “Ambivalence about legally administered death, sponsored by the state with bureaucratic detachment but not always precisely carried out, has long run much deeper among Europeans than among Americans, and has led to its abolition or suspension over the past century in nearly all democracies and every European or Central Asian country but Belarus”.

Knowlton first shows the distinct difference in capital punishment philosophy between European Nations and the United States. Capital punishment has all but disappeared in European nations and experts say the dismissal happened sooner because of “revulsion over wartime use of capital punishment, especially in Germany, and because of differences in justice and political systems”.  Knowlton points out that in most European countries the judges are appointed rather than publicly elected. This is important because a majority of voters would favor the death penalty rather than abolish it. The United States is also a two party system, as opposed to a multiparty parliamentary system, that has each...