Death Penalty

1) Do other countries have the death penalty? - According to Amnesty International, 139 countries have abolished the death penalty. In 2010, only one country, Gabon, abolished the death penalty for all crimes. During 2010, 23 countries executed 527 prisoners and at least 2,024 people were sentenced to death in 67 countries. More than 17,833 people are currently under sentence of death around the world. The death penalty differs from country to country, and have many variables such as: culture, religion, region, severity of the crime, age, gender,etc. It is different everywhere, but one thing is certain. Everywhere it is highly controversial.


2)What was the first case of the death penalty? - The first known execution in the territory now known as the United States of America was of Captain George Kendall, who was shot by a firing squad in Jamestown in December 1607 (other sources say sometime in 1608), accused of sowing discord and mutiny (some sources say he was also accused of spying against the British for Spain). The next known execution, allso in the Colony of Virginia, was of Daniel Frank, put to death in 1622 for the crime of theft. The death penalty has been around for a very long time, but has not been used as much as people think. Records of the death penalty have only been around since 1930. 


3) How much does it cost to pay for the death penalty?- The death penalty is much more expensive than life without parole because the Constitution requires a long and complex judicial process for capital cases. This process is needed in order to ensure that innocent men and woman are not executed for crimes they did not commit, and even with these protections the risk of executing an innocent person can not be completely eliminated.Over two-thirds of the states and the federal government have installed an exorbitantly expensive system of capital punishment which has been a failure by any measure of effectiveness. Literally hundreds of millions of dollars have already been spent on a response to crime which is calculated to be carried out on a few people each year and which has done nothing to stem the rise in violent crime. A capital trial costs $116,700 more than an ordinary murder. trial




http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0777460.html
http://justice.uaa.alaska.edu/death/history.html