The death penalty is a punishment that involves taking the life of the convicted person.
The death penalty is a corporal punishment since it has a direct effect on the body of the person punished. As its name indicates, the death penalty consists of taking the life of the person who, according to a judge , is considered guilty of a serious offense.
The concept of punishment has its origin in the Latin term poena and refers to the punishment that is established by a magistrate or a court in accordance with what is stipulated by law , and whose purpose is to punish someone who has committed a crime or a crime. lack .
Origins of the death penalty
It could be said that the death penalty, also called capital punishment , has its origins with the Law of Talion ( "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" ), which is included in the Code of Hammurabi in the 17th century BC.
In any case, many personalities throughout history have supported or justified this type of punishment, such as Plato , Aristotle , Saint Thomas Aquinas , Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel .
The case of the United States
The United States is one of the countries that currently continues to maintain the death penalty in force, despite the fact that institutions and organizations such as the European Union have attempted to abolish that law . And the figures never cease to amaze in the 21st century since in North American lands, more than a dozen people are usually executed each year.
It is also important to emphasize that in that nation those sentenced to death see their lives end through the system of lethal injection . That is, a procedure by which those, continuously and intravenously, are injected in a quantity that is fatal with a fast-acting barbiturate that is mixed with a paralytic.
In this sense, although that one ends the lives of the inmates , it is unique to highlight a case that occurred in 2009 and that is that a person condemned to death survived his execution after receiving almost twenty punctures.
The electric chair is one of the methods used to apply the death penalty.
Abolition of the death penalty
Execution by shooting , hanging , beheading , gas chamber , electric chair , stoning and the aforementioned lethal injection are some of the methods used to apply the death penalty.
However, currently, most countries have abolished the death penalty, considering it a barbaric method that violates dignity and human rights. There are those who question it from a practical point of view (the judges who sentence people to death are human, so they can make mistakes and blame an innocent person) and others take into account philosophical or religious factors (only God can give or take life). ).
A Tim Robbins movie
In addition to all of the above, we can point out that American cinema has made a large number of films that revolve around the aforementioned capital punishment. However, among all of them we should highlight the one entitled "Death Penalty" (1995), directed by Tim Robbins .
Susan Sarandon ySean Penn son los protagonistas de dicha producción en la que se narra la historia real de un hombre que fue condenado a morir por considerarse culpable del asesinato de dos jóvenes. Sus últimos días de vida son los que se retratan en este film que gira en torno a la relación que el reo mantendrá con una monja que intentará darle consuelo.