Throughout history, societies have always debated how to punish those who commit crimes. Capital punishment has always been a common choice for the crime of murder. Over the 200 years of the existence of the United States, the issue of the death penalty has become one of the most controversial issues of all. Capital punishment was always allowed in the U.S. until 1972, when the Supreme Court declared in Furman v. Georgia that the death penalty “constituted cruel and unusual punishment” (qtd. in Bedeau n.pag.). The death penalty was th ....