Death Penalty Position

While sitting in one of my Political Science classes today, it was asked where we stand on the death penalty. I said, "I've changed over the years to now oppose the death penalty for two reasons: 1) I think it fosters violence within the culture, and 2) I don't think there is a person on earth wise enough to know who needs to die." While I am not graduated to the point of Gandhiji and the opposition to eating a hamburger that comes along with that, I do understand that raising a machete (or some other item of death) to take the life of something that is looking you in the eye and can experience terror, somehow changes the executioner and defiles their innocence. On the second point, I think it speaks for itself.