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"An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth"...so says the Old Testament of the Judeo-Christian Bible. Throughout history, different societies have incorporated this principle into their legal and cultural lives. In today's context in the United States, this traditi ....

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.... would-be criminals into abstaining from murder for fear of the fatal penalty. According to statistics, however, no such effect is apparent. "Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, the number of executions and the size of death row have substantially increased. Yet during this same period of time, the FBI Uniform Crime Reports show virtually no change in the national murder rate" (). Moreover, some sociologists like Hugo Adam Bedau in his book The Death Penalty in America suggest that these very executions intended to deter crime, may, in fact, incite crime through a "brutalization" effect, whereby a cycle of violence and murder is ....