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Murder is the taking of one's life, against his or her will. The death penalty involuntarily terminates one's life, with the consent of the government. Therefore, the death penalty is legalized murder. Additionally, it's barbaric and serves no reasonable purpose, whatsoever.

Let me state it more simply. I've heard it said that we murder people, who murder people, to show them that murdering people is wrong.

Among countries still insisting on the appropriateness and effectiveness of the death penalty are the United States, Algeria, Libya, Uganda, Afghanistan, China, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Vietnam. Quite an impressive array of forward thinking nations with which we find ourselves aligned. This group even includes the entire, so called, "Axis of Evil."

With the exception of Russia, Belarus, Transnistria and Northern Cyprus, capital punishment is nowhere to be found on the European continent.

Count Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela among other countries that concluded long ago the death penalty was a Neanderthal approach to sentencing capital criminals.

Many Americans argue that executing those that kill others serves as a necessary deterrent to future murderers. Not surprisingly, they haven't done their homework. For example, Texas and Florida individually execute more convicted murderers, then all other states. There is no capital punishment in Wisconsin or Vermont.

Texas and Florida have much higher murder rates.

However, isn't capital punishment much less expensive than keeping a convicted murderer in prison for the duration of his or her life? Once again, the facts bear out a different story. Carrying out a capital execution is much more expensive, then requiring that convicted murderers spend their remaining lives in prison. There are far more legal hurdles to clear, in the case of an execution, then there are if the same criminal is sentenced to prison for the remainder of his or her natural life. Clearing these legal hurdles comes at great expense to taxpayers.

Like them or not, prolonged capital punishment legal proceedings are mandated by law. These laws are intended to keep the innocent from being executed. Nonetheless, are the innocent sometimes executed, as a result of having fallen through cracks in an imperfect legal system? Absolutely! In the late 1990's, Illinois Governor Bob Ryan found 13 innocent men on his state's death

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