why i can't oppose the death penalty in all cases

[starroute]

68. I think the different between our positions is that you think of it as "punishment"

And that doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

I'm fairly skeptical about the effectiveness of punishment in general -- but there seem to be three general rationales for it. One is that it prevents the person from committing the same offense a second time, which obviously isn't the case if you're talking about execution. Second is that it acts as a deterrent to prevent other people from committing similar crimes, which also seems questionable when you're dealing with extremely rare or even unique events.

And the third is that it makes a strong statement on the part of society at large that certain kinds of behavior will not be tolerated. This is why we have hate crime laws that make certain offenses worse if they are committed against members of vulnerable minorities. It is why we have terrorism laws that make certain offenses more serious if they are committed with the intention of making a society act against its own standards and interests. It makes us inclined to come down harder on officials who violate the public trust or on corporate executives who bribe and corrupt those officials than on ordinary citizens cheating other ordinary citizens.

I can see something of that third approach coming into play in the case of a soldier who casts discredit on his country's reputation. But even in his case, to execute him would be something like a Middle Eastern honor killing -- a way of saying that he has brought shame on the nation that can only be wiped out in blood.

And beyond that, there seems to be something logically unsound in your saying, "it wouldn't be unusual because it would apply to anyone whose crimes met that criteria." The problem is that a heinous crime is, by definition, one so unusual and aberrant that it shocks the conscience -- and that's not something that can be defined in law. You can define certain classes of crimes and lay out appropriate penalties for them, but you can't define a class of crimes as "those which are worse than all normal crimes," and there is no such things as a "group" of heinous criminals.

This means that what you are proposing would become a matter of emotion, not law -- and would ultimately undermine the very concept of justice.