by Andrea Nostramo

Created on: August 20, 2008

This is not a matter of opinion. The question was not whether or not capital punishment is morally wrong but rather whether it deters crime effectively. The answer to that is, factually, no. I will get to that momentarily.

First off, the sentiment of "an eye for an eye" is most often misconstrued. The saying is not meant to incite revenge, but rather dissuade extreme punishment. To quote the late comedian George Carlin, "An eye for an eye is not a call for revenge; it is an argument for fairness. In the time of the Bible, it was standard to take a life in exchange for an eye. But the Bible said, No, the punishment should fit the crime. Only an eye for an eye, nothing more. It is not vindictive, it is mitigatory."

In a 2006 poll shown on Showtime, it was revealed that 64% of Americans support the death penalty. And it isn't hard to see why. Whenever murder is committed, it is natural to feel the bloodthirsty need for vengeance. Last year, in 2007, a close friend of mine took his own life, but at first the police thought he'd been murdered. When I heard the news, I wanted to rip that person apart limb from limb, and rightfully so. When someone close to us has been killed it is an unimaginable thing and the desire for vengeance is perfectly natural. Even when someone we DON'T know is murdered - someone we just see on the news - especially when there are CHILDREN involved, it tugs at our heartstrings and we can't even imagine the family's torment.

However, those feelings are biased.

The dictionary defines "bias" as: "a particular tendency or inclination, especially one that prevents unprejudiced consideration of a question; prejudice."

When someone is murdered, it is completely natural for the mourning family and friends to become angry and vengeful; in fact ANGER is one of the well-known Kubler-Ross stages of grief. Fortunately, for these angry people, our nation has a government, whose job it is to mitigate these circumstances fairly and UNbiasedly. This is so that - as a group - we can act more logically, more reasonably, more RATIONALLY, than an individual would.

Agnes Heller, a Holocaust survivor and Philosophy professor at The New School for Social Research, explains it like this, "In the 21st century, the death penalty takes away a part of our humanity...[and] deterrence is the worst, the most fraudulent principle. The death penalty has no deterrent effect because murder is committed for three different reasons or motivations. First: passion; second: profit; and

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