I also agree with Mick (at least to an extent), and for the reasons I mentioned in previous posts. Trying to give a "deterrent" by killing someone once they've already committed the crime doesn't make a whole lotta sense. So I'd guess that the folks so hot up for "deterrence" must be thinking we're going to give some kind of message to the kids in gangs then (and hopefully a different and more uplifting one than "Tookie" WIlliams was giving them). Sounds to me like the message we're conveying to the kids -- in gangs that are rife with the concepts of "honour" and "payback" and "you mess with us, we'll mess with you, you hit one of ours, we'll hit one of yours..." -- is that when a gangmember takes a life, we're going to demand "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth". Yep, that's the ticket....

Cheers,