This Torah portion encourages us to think carefully about the issue of capital punishment and our responsibility to prevent today's children from becoming tomorrow's capital offenders. Jewish tradition is circumspect about punishment in general. Talmudic rabbis changed the thrust of the biblical lex talionis by interpreting the law to require financial compensation for loss of income, medical damages, damage for shame, physical or emotional pain and suffering. A life must be repaid with a life except in cases of accidental death. Today, popular sentiment increasingly calls for the death penalty in response to capital crime.
Capital punishment provides victims' families with an outlet for revenge.
A death sentence instead of life imprisonment stresses that capital crime is inherently evil. Evidence that would exonerate an innocent individual is of no use if it comes to light after that individual has been executed. Capital punishment teaches citizens and criminals alike that murder is justified in certain conditions. Capital punishment does not deter murder. The rates of capital crime have not declined in states where the death penalty has been reinstituted.