I think there are acts that PERMANENTLY disqualify a person from participation in human society.

[markpkessinger]

92. But here's the problem . . .

I am 100% opposed to capital punishment. Do I lose a great deal of sleep when a cretin like the guy in Ohio is executed? Honestly, no. But it is relatively easy, in a case such as this one where there is virtually no doubt about the guilt of the person, and his acts were so utterly horrific. There are also many executions carried out in this country in which the guilt is not so certain. An emotional argument in favor of a particular execution, based on the grief of loved ones or the horror of the specific crime, that is used extends to support for the death penalty as a general practice, but which fails to address the built-in moral problem of of the human fallibility of our system of justice that sometimes results in executions that are unjust by any standard, is a fundamentally dishonest argument. So long as our system of justice depends upon the fallible judgment of human beings -- human beings whose judgments are sometimes affected by things such as prejudice or that sometimes fall under the sway of corrupting influences -- and so long as district attorneys and judges remain political, elected positions throughout much of the country, causing some prosecutors to over-prosecute and some judges to mete out unduly harsh sentences. And there has never been a system of justice yet devised that is free of such fallibility, thus there will never be any way to ensure that capital punishment is only used in those cases where it is arguably "deserved."

You say that you haven't seen a single mention of the pain of the victim's wife in this case. But I could equally say that nowhere in your argument is there any mention of the incalculable grief suffered by the families of the wrongfully executed. Look nobody here is minimizing the grief of the victim's loved ones, or the horror of the underlying crime, in this or any other case, and I suggest it is unfair of you to suggest or imply that. But state-sanctioned killing of the person who murdered their loved one will neither mitigate their loss nor ameliorate their grief. It might satisfy other emotions -- such as anger or a desire for vengeance, but it is not the business of the state to encourage or satisfy those impulses, humanly understandable though they certainly are.

Support for or opposition to the death penalty should never be based upon the emotions attendant to a particular case, or to 'easy' cases in isolation from the cases of wrongful execution. Emotions alone are often a very poor guide to good ethics.