"An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." These are words spoken but not practiced in America, or are they? The United States does not rest its punishments on this axiom. If you rape someone, you are not raped. If you rob a store, you are not robbed in return. No, you receive prison time, or something to that manner. Why is the act of murdering any different? Is killing a person really the way to teach one a lesson? A murderer, by any means, does not deserve to live in any society. But what does murdering them do? Nothing. It does not save money, it does not teach others a lesson, and has not been proven to be a deterrent.
             "Twenty-three innocent people have been mistakenly executed this century" (Guilty 1). According to some death penalty supporters, killing prisoners is the only way to ensure that they will never commit a crime again. A state policy of executing prisoners, however, reflects several false assumptions. Unlike imprisonment, the death penalty entails the inherent risk of judicial errors, which can never be corrected. Who lives and whom dies may be decided by factors that have nothing to do with a case: errors, misunderstandings, or different interpretations of the law. Even a defense lawyer's lack of skill or delayed access to evidence may lead to execution. Each year approximately 4.5 people are convicted of capital crimes who are actually innocent; Over sixty nine people have been released since 1972 as a result of being wrongly convicted, and that is more than one wrongly convicted person for every hundred people on death row (Guilty 1).
             In the article The Case Against The Death Penalty:
             In 1975, only a year before the Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of capital punishment, two African American men in Florida were released from prison after waiting twelve years for execution for the murder of two white men. Their convictions were the results of coerced confessions, erroneous test...