Death Penalty

Want to read the rest of this paper? Join Essayworld today to view this entire essay and over 50,000 other term papers

people decided that lethal gas, or the gas chamber, was more humane than death by electrocution. Nevada was the first state to adopt the gas chamber as their form of execution. The "Humane Death Bill" was passed abolishing all other forms of execution (Hanging or firing squad were the only other two forms of execution at that time) in the state of Nevada, this bill was signed by the governor on March 28, 1921. Not long after electrocution was tried as being inhumane, the gas chamber was challenged as being cruel and unusual punishment also. Gee Jon and Hughie Sing were the first two people to be sentenced to die by lethal gas. Justice Coleman, after the appeal was denied, relied on the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment to try and prove that the courts was not able to say that lethal gas was a painless way of putting a man to death. He tried to prove that it would subject the victim to either pain or torture. Many people attended the execution of Gee ...

Get instant access to over 50,000 essays. Write better papers. Get better grades. Already a member? Login

After all this happened the question of what would replace the electric chair if and when Florida got rid of it came up. The answer to that was lethal injection, a mix of drugs that sends a person in to unconsciousness and then kills them. This was described as similar to putting an animal down. This was a method already employed by 32 states and seemed like the best solution to the problem at hand. Of the 32 states already using lethal injection Florida Corrections Commission surveyed 17 of these states. The majority of these states said that they switched to "the needle", lethal injection because it is the most humane form of capital punishment. Florida took polls showing the ...

Succeed in your coursework without stepping into a library. Get access to a growing library of notes, book reports, and research papers in 2 minutes or less.

CITE THIS PAGE: