Capital Punishment: Justice as Punishment The American government operates as an indirect democracy. Citizens live under a social contract under which individuals agree to give up certain rights for the good of the community. Punishments for crimes against the state are carried out through due process, guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. The use of capital punishment is decided by the state, which is legal in thirty-seven states. It is a moral imperative to protect the right of states to decide their own position on the use of capital punishment. Capital punishment is a method of retributive punishment as old as civilization itself. Both the Greeks and Romans invoked the death penalty for a wide variety of crimes. Socrates and Jesus were perhaps the most famous people ever convicted of a capital crime in ancient times. The Code of Hammurabi, a code of laws developed by the king of an early empire, dates back to the third or second millennium BC. This code states that punishment, an eye for an eye and a life for a life, is justice. In Anglo-American law the death penalty has been a customary response to certain types of crimes. The movement in America to have the death penalty declared unconstitutional received its greatest attention during the landmark case "Furman v. Georgia", rendered on June 29, 1972, which declared the death penalty to be cruel and unusual punishment. No executions occurred between 1967 and 1977 (Bedau, 1992). However, after the 1975 Supreme Court decision “Gregg v. Georgia,” which held that capital punishment did not violate the Eighth Amendment, executions resumed under state supervision. Is it appropriate to continue capital punishment? Punishment is a judgment... middle of paper......waiting for the sentence to be carried out. This lesson can be said to be of no benefit to society as it is too late for the criminal. It's too late even for the victim killed in cold blood. To regard this as "bloodthirsty revenge" would be to say that capital punishment is itself an injustice. Isn't it an injustice to let a cold-blooded killer escape the consequences of a crime? A society that tolerates injustice can in no way be called just. Works Cited Bedau, Hugo Adam. Despite the innocence. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992.Block, Eugene B.. When Men Play God: The Fallacy of Capital Punishment. San Francisco: Cragmont Publications, 1983.Locke, John. Second Treatise on Civil Government. Chapter 2, Section 6. Meltser, Michael. Cruel and Unusual: The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment. New York: Random House, 1973.