This essay addresses one of the most controversial discussions known as Capital Punishment. This is a subject that, according to the author, does not have a positive effect on reducing crime worldwide. For almost three years now, the writer has been passionate about the criminal behavior in some of the most notorious crime cases that resulted in capital punishment and wrongful executions. One of my favorite criminal cases in history is that of the Scottsboro Boys. This case represents an incident in which five innocent African American men were nearly executed after being accused and convicted of raping two white women on the back of a train in 1931. This case is one of several reasons why I am against capital punishment, because it can lead to the wrongful death of innocent men and women, without evidence or justified witnesses. The writer is also that capital punishment was once considered a ceremony open to the public until the 19th century. Melusky and Pesto (2011) describe witnessing the execution of a criminal as a "quasi-religious event during which the condemned person was expected to express repentance and, in an early version of "Scared Straight," rebuke the children brought to bear witness to the execution. show so as not to follow his path of crime” (Melusky and Pesto: 2). In the 19th century, many states called for the abolition of the death penalty. According to William S. McFeely, Michigan was the first state to eliminate the death penalty in 1846. Shortly afterward, nine other states also abolished the use of the death penalty as a punishment until the end of the First World War, when half of the nine states and a few new states reinstated the death penalty. As of summer 2015, only thirty-one states use capital punishment, while nineteen of fifty states have abolished capital punishment, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.