Shimrod, I think the answer to your question is a fairly simple one which would, of course, go totally over the heads of those like Falco and Co who espouse totalitarian values.

Firstly, it is not just the death of one person we are talking about but the whole priciple of having a death penalty, which accounts for the deaths of many thousands of people each year. To edit my previous quote from Tordorv: "we may therefore question whether states that continue to make wide use of the death penalty can really be considered part of the democratic world."

Secondly, and here again, this is something that Falco is totally against, we are talking about basic human rights that form the basis of a civilised society and of democrarcy as enshrined in so many priciples from Thomas Paine through to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Totalitarianism relies on the subjugation of individual human rights, as anyone who has studied the history of the 20th century will know. One of the basic human rights is to justice - a fair trial and not to be subjected to inhumane punishment. If we violate the human rights of an invididual, we are setting a precedent to violating the human rights of groups and then the rights of the entire populace. For an excellent summary of human rights today, you may like to read A C Grayling's Liberty in the Age of Terror. Falco, of course, will continue to rely on his own ignorance and stupidity.

I agree that there are many problems in the world which need to be addressed but that doesn't mean we should ignore tha basic ones on which a civilised and democratic society is based.