In the 7th century BC the ancient Athenian legal system used draconian laws that established the death penalty as punishment for all crimes. burning the condemned alive, crucifying them, impaling them and drowning them, for those found guilty (Kudlac,2007). The Draco Laws of Ancient Athens were soon deemed ruthless as they implemented such ruthless punishments for a wide variety of crimes, so changes to the death penalty would soon be implemented. In the 18th century BC, King Hammurabi of Babylon established a formal code that established the death penalty for twenty-five crimes which ironically did not include murder (Newbold,1999). This was recognized as one of the first recorded codes of law that developed and shaped our principles of authority that govern the world today (Charpin and Todd, 2010). Cultural factors have also led to historical shifts toward death