This essay is about one of the most controversial discussions known as Capital Punishment. This is a topic in which the writer believes does not have a positive effect on decreasing crime in the world. For almost three years now, the writer has cultivated a passion for criminal behavior in some of the crime cases that have led to 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 faced execution after being accused and convicted of raping two white women on the back of a train in 1931. This case is one of the many reasons why I am against capital punishment because it can lead to the wrongful death of innocent men and women without justified evidence and witnesses. Also by the writer Capital punishment was once considered a ceremony open to the public until the 19th century. Melusky and Pesto (2011) describe watching a criminal's execution as a "quasi-religious event in which the condemned man was expected to express his repentance and, in an early version of 'Scared Straight,' admonish the children brought to witness the execution". show so as not to follow his criminal path” (Melusky and Pesto:2). In the nineteenth century many states had called for the abolition of the death penalty. According to William S. McFeely, Michigan was the first state to abolish the death penalty in 1846. Soon after, nine other states had also abolished the use of the death penalty as punishment until the end of World War I, when half of nine states and some new states have reinstated the death penalty. As of the summer of 2015, only thirty-one states use capital punishment, while nineteen out of fifty states have abolished capital punishment according to the Death Penalty Information Center.