MatthewE1

    �No cause is helpless if it is just. Errors, no matter how popular, carry the seeds of their own destruction.� �John W. Scoville. Capital punishment is just in that when convicted a life is taken for a life.   Since 1930, this has happened to 4,459 people. The death penalty is certainly just and needed today in America. Thirty-eight states currently administer the death penalty. The methods used are lethal injection, electrocution, gas chamber, hanging and firing squad.
     The Bible states: �And he that killeth any man shall surely be put to death.� Leviticus 24:17. There is special emphasis on the word surely in that verse. It doesn�t mean sometimes, it means all the time. In the bible, it states that a person should surely die for committing the following sins: murder, incest, adultery, kidnapping, careless handling of an animal, and many more. It also states that a person died for using birth control, something a great deal of females use today. This doesn�t mean in every case death was the sentence; but a point does need to be made that there is scripture to support the notion that at least some of the time death was used as punishment for every sin mentioned.
     When talking about the Bible and capital punishment, some people against the death penalty will bring up a verse in John that states �He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.� While this is very good argument, how that verse got into the Bible should be questioned. This particular passage wasn�t in the ancient manuscripts of the book of John. Some unknown person(s) apparently added it. People also bring up the 6th Commandment: �Thou shalt not kill.� This is stated differently in the New International Version, which is from proper Hebrew translation. It reads �You shall not murder.� A distinction has to be made between the words �kill� and �murder�. Kill means to deprive of life. On the other hand, murder is to kill (a human being) unlawfully and with premeditated malice. These are not interchangeable terms.
     The death penalty is 100% deterrence from crime. The person convicted will never again kill, will never again do that horrible crime that got him/her there in the first place.   That is one fact about death; it is irrevocable and unchangeable forever. Often after a person is put on death row, they get pity from people that talk about how wrong execution is and how it shouldn�t be done. They seem to forget about the victim that was murdered first.
     There is a bumper sticker that reads �We kill people to show that killing people is wrong.� While this sounds good, it is not the literal truth. Yes, murder is a form of killing; but isn�t perjury a form of lying, too? Kill and murder, as stated before, are not the same. The slogan would me more truthful if it read: �We execute people to show that murdering people is wrong.�