Capital punishment has been part of the legal actions of societies since the dawn of primitive culture. Each society has made its own decisions regarding what crimes, if any; warrant the death of he or she who committed them. These decisions have never been taken lightly and not without their share of debate. The issue of ending a person’s life has been universally considered a social negative. One cannot feel truly safe in a community that condones murder. But, different communities have attached different standards to ending life. The United States government, as well as the state governments themselves, has made determinations of what conditions a person or institution may legally kill another. Some of these conditions include: killing in self-defense, while in combat, while performing police duty and in the termination of a criminal’s life that has received the death penalty. With relatively few instances in which killing is socially acceptable (or at least tolerated) the ways in which killing is illegal are innumerable. Our society has subdivided murder into different classifications based upon the circumstances and the intent of the person who has done the killing. But, murder is not the only crime that can lead to the death penalty. Rape, kidnapping that ends in death, treason, have also been crimes, which lead to a death sentence. The crux of the debate over the legitimacy of this method of punishment centers around the moral responsibility at stake in the action. When distilled to it’s most fundamental state, the argument is this: Does killing a killer make us killers, or does it make us saviors?