Death Penalty

The death penalty, also known as the capital punishment is the killing of a person as punishment for a number of crimes including murder, treason, war crimes and others. The sentence ordering that an offender be punished in such a way is known as a death sentence, and the act of carrying out the sentence is known as an execution. A prisoner who has been sentenced to death and awaits execution is condemned and is commonly referred to as being "on death row". Etymologically, the term capital is derived from the Latin capitalis from caput meaning head and refers to execution by beheading, but executions are carried out by many methods, including hanging, shooting, lethal injection, stoning, electrocution, and gassing. For the purposes of this evaluation, the reason for the criminal's death penalty is because they are a serial killer who has murdered five people.

Real World Examples

Ted Bundy

Ted Bundy was an American serial killer who kidnapped and murdered dozens of people during the 1970s. He confessed to 30 murders however the amount of victims is suspected to be higher. In 1975,Bundy was jailed for aggravated kidnapping, and this lead to a longer list of unsolved homicide cases, where Bundy was the main suspect. After escaping, committing more homicides and being recaptured, Bundy was executed by electric chair on January 24th 1989.