Should the death penalty be allowed?

I actually just wrote a paper about this. My perspective is, how could the government tell us that everyone has the right to life, then turn their backs and take someone's life? It's absolute ludicrousness! I mean, sure, keeping a man in prison for a lifetime rather than executing him would take up space, but killing him? I don't really have a tic-for-tac kind of viewpoint, so I view execution of these criminals to be merely for the moral satisfaction of the "righteous". The death penalty should be eradicated, in my opinion.