Since the first settlers set foot on what is now the United States of America, capital punishment has been reserved as a form of punishment for those who have committed some of society's most serious crimes. heinous crimes. Recently, support for capital punishment has begun to erode due to advances in DNA technology and groups such as the Innocence Project. The death penalty, however, remains an appropriate form of punishment for a person convicted of capital crimes and can be effective in deterring such crimes. In December 1607, Captain George Kendall was the first known person to be executed in the territory now known as the United States of America. Captain Kendall was shot, accused of spying against the British for Spain (Green, 2005). On July 7, 1865, at the site of present-day Fort McNair in Washington, D.C., four people, including the first woman to be executed, Mary Surratt, were hanged for conspiring with John Wilkes Booth in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. (Swanson; Weinberg, 2006). Most recently, Timothy McVeigh was executed on June 11, 2001, for the April 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, which killed 168 people, including 19 children, and injured hundreds more (2004). These are just a few of the thousands of examples where justice has been served for the heinous crimes these criminals inflict on innocent people. Currently, 35 states still impose the death penalty while 16 states, including the District of Columbia, have abolished it. Opponents of capital punishment point out that states that allow the death penalty have experienced 42 percent more murders than states that have abolished the death penalty... middle of paper ......pleasure of killing our friends, neighbors, and children while they live out the rest of their lives in prison. The 17th-century philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) best summed up the justification for capital punishment with his theory of retributivism. In a famous passage, Kant says: "Even if a civil society resolved to dissolve itself with the consent of all its members - as one might suppose in the case of a people inhabiting an island resolved to separate and disperse across around the world – the last murderer in prison had to be executed before the resolution was implemented. This must be done so that everyone can realize the merit of their deeds and that the guilt of blood does not remain on the people; otherwise, they will all be considered to have participated in the murder, which constitutes a public violation of justice. (Rachel, 2010)