The death penalty is a highly controversial and hotly debated topic. The death penalty is completely obsolete in English-speaking Western countries; the only exception is the United States of America. Capital punishment is applied only in cases of treason and murder 1. Supporters of the death penalty believe that putting a murderer to death gives the murdered person's family the knowledge that justice has been done. Opposition to the death penalty believes that the punishment is too “definitive”: it offers no possibility of rehabilitation. Both sides, however, recognize the need for change in the justice system regarding capital punishment. The common problem is finding a punishment that is harsh enough to deter crime but still offers the possibility of rehabilitation. The standard form of execution involves the use of lethal injection, in which the condemned man is tied to a chair and injected with sodium thiopental to cause unconsciousness, pancuronium bromide to induce paralysis, and potassium chloride to stop the heart. Texas is the most liberal state in its use of the death penalty, accounting for 34 percent of the national total since 1976. The death penalty has been a part of civilization for all of man's existence, dating back to ancient Greece and from Egypt to the present day. On November 1, 1987, Federico Romano discovered that his sister had been beaten, tortured, mutilated and killed in her apartment. The killer, Steven Oken, had also killed two other women: Patricia Hirt and Lori Ward. Romano waited until 2002 to see his sister's killer die and said, “This is not closure. There will never be a closure. It's about seeing justice served, not just for my sister, but for Lori and Patricia. A few days before Oken's execution, the attorney general of M...... half of the document ...... death penalty has the largest number of violent crimes. Many death penalty opponents believe that the death penalty violates basic human rights by preventing cruel and unusual punishments mandated by the Constitution. Supporters of the death penalty believe that the punishment should fit the crime, some even going so far as to say that the perpetrator of the crime should be killed the same way he killed his victims. Radicalism is rampant on both sides of this issue. The death penalty remains a highly controversial and highly criticized topic. Both sides vehemently argue from many different angles about the constitutionality, morality and justice of the death penalty; but both sides know that there must be some form of punishment for violent criminals who commit murders. The conflict arises with the question: “what punishment is right for a convicted murderer?”