It looks like our fair country is once again debating the use of the death penalty. The conversation regained media attention a few weeks ago when a prison in Ohio executed a prisoner with a never-been-used lethal drug cocktail.

The prison resorted to using the cocktail due to a shortage of pentobarbital, the drug typically used in lethal injections. The European companies that manufacture the drug are refusing to sell the drug to Americans if it is going to used in capital punishment. Their reasoning is that the death penalty is immoral, and they are correct.

We defend the use of capital punishment by saying that taking the life of another individual is the most heinous of crimes, and must be met with a comparable punishment. After all, it is what are justice system demands. But if taking another person’s life is so heinous of a crime, then what give the state the right to that, let alone in the name of justice?

It’s hypocritical to kill someone for killing if you claim it’s the most heinous crime. When a prisoner is executed, someone has to be there to flip the switch, to make the injection, or pull the trigger that will end the prisoner’s life.

The executioner is committing the same heinous crime that put the prisoner on death row; they are taking another person’s life. The only thing that makes the executioners better than the people they kill is it’s government sanctioned murder.

This is not something we should accept.

Killing a person because they killed another person does not even the score; it doesn’t bring anyone back from the dead. It certainly doesn’t undo the crime. And killing the prisoners teaches them nothing, because dead people can’t learn anything.

America likes to think of itself as a beacon of liberty and freedom, but how can we believe that when we are one of the only western nations who still partakes in this barbaric ritual? We can’t.

We are a violent nation; the practice of capital punishment supports that.

This is not punishment, this is revenge. Taking a life for a life only means that two lives have been lost and we have discarded a piece of our humanity to mete out revenge in the guise of justice. If we want to believe in the honor of our justice system, then we cannot allow that to stand.

While capital punishment has kept some dangerous criminals permanently removed from society, it has not been a good crime deterrent. States with the death penalty have higher homicide rates than states without the death penalty. If capital punishment was an effective crime deterrent then it should be the other way around.

Due to court costs, capital punishment is also more expensive than imprisoning someone for life, and the number of prisoners who are executed every year is not enough to put a dent is the overcrowding problem.

Capital punishment does seems to do much but satiate our desire for revenge, for repaying blood with blood. That may fly out in the state of nature, but this is supposed to be a civilized society. It’s time we start acting like it.