Should the U.S. Abolish the Death Penalty?

No proof of deterence only proof of revenge and retribution

Among the innumerable,screwed up, neo-con principles that seperates Americans and divides this nation, the death penalty is a core tenet........an eye for an eye, assuage your grief (fear,loathing,anger, superiority, etc.) by punishing the offender and if a few mistakes are made, too bad.
In most civilized societies, the idea of killing the killer is contradictory, ignorant and clearly ineffective. If the crime is pre-meditated, the last thing going through the criminals mind is being caught and facing a death penalty. If the crime is one of spontaneous rage, the fear of apprehension or subsequent death is totally absent, at least until the offender returns to a calmer state. If the crime is a toxic blend of addiction and insane pleasure(serial killers) getting caught and being executed are, more or less minor irritations, if not welcome relief. If the crime is a "professional hit" or something similar then there is little fear of the consequences and a surity of being able to evade them easily. If the crime is accidental, there is no death penalty, unless it occurs in the committing of another crime ( robbery , rape , etc.) and so on.
Those who quote spurious and highly politically spun "statistics, research and proofs" that the death penalty is an effective deterrent are in the same class as those who claim their particular religious dogmas, books, beliefs, words of Divine guidance, ad nausea are deluded and morally simplistic.
Every religious text has, among other Values, the basic tenet that the sanctity of life is unbreachable and that no one has God's authorization to take life, period. Despite this, the fanatical religious right, along with the fanatical terrorist minorities and the dissolute, corrupt dictators worldwide perversly adhere to their "right"to kill whomever they determine to be enemies of God, the State, criminals or even their personal adversaries.
I am a proud citizen of a nation who has ended capital punishment decades past and it is one of the safest, least violent countries in the world. We also strictly control access to weapons by the general public AND employ an effective, carefully monitored supervision and training for those given the priviledge to own a weapon. Our violent crime rate has declined over the past 40 years by about .8% per year while about 5% of those imprisoned for a capital crime have subsequently been released as innocent of their original "crime". It is singularly hypocritical to maintain that the most just and rightful punishment for murder is to murder the offender, but the gut satisfying appeal of watching the person who murdered being subjected to the same treatment as their victim(s) is a particularly difficult addiction to break.