DEATH PENALT AND MORALITY
Capital Punishment is the legal infliction of the
death penalty. In the United States capital
punishment is legal in thirty-nine of the fifty
states. Beginning in 1973, prison populations began
an inevitable growth. There were 204,211 inmates in
1973, and by 1977 the number of prisoners had grown to
285,456, which later grew to 315,974 in 1980. By
1976, it was clear that the death penalty had to be
reinstated. America's twenty-one year experiment with
capital punishment has resulted in a total of 392
executions, seventy eight of which took place in 1996
alone. Of…
