"Each case on it's own merits. Fair. Let's say, for the sake of arguement that he actually did do all the crimes he is accused of doing. Do you still want to keep him around?"

Yes, because it isn't about him, it is about us as a society. Murdering him doesn't do anything, except give a few people a shot of vengeance adrenalin.

Roger in Baltimore, I have a similar story to yours. It was my cousin's son, 16 years old, shot to death as he rode his bike home one summer night around 10:30 pm. It was a gang initiation. All three of the teenagers involved in the murder were convicted, and sentenced to life in prison.

Our state has no death penalty. Some members of our family and friends wished there was. I wasn't among them, and neither were any members of the boy's immediate family, who are Catholic, and opposed to the death penalty.

Sad. Depressing. Disempowering. Maddening. We were certainly angry. I am still angry, every time I think about it (he was the same age as one of my two kids). But killing the shooter won't change anything. Not one thing. It won't lessen the horror the family went through in the wake of the murder, or what seemed like the endless days of the trials (3 of them).

Amazingly, even though over 90% of the parents of murdered children get divorced, these two didn't. They have admirably moved beyond the stage of being stranded in the grief and rage over how their son died, and have redeemed themselves and their marriage by remembering him the way he lived, and in seeing the beauty of his life. I don't know if people who witness the murder of the person who murders their loved one reach that state of grace, but I kind of doubt it. It seems to me that living in a constant state of vengeance and hate pretty much condemns a person to remain untouched by the state of grace that is always possible, no matter how horrific the death.

We aren't what we are because of the way we die, but because of the way we live. And that is what loved ones should try and hold onto, rather than bitterness, vengeance, and hate. At least, that is my take on it, after watching people I knew go through a murder in their family.