EBarnacle,

That's one of the best arguments I've ever seen against the death penalty, but I don't follow the logic in the third paragraph. No one (except the "never kill" crowd) ever argued that capital punishment shouldn't be meted out on a case-by-case basis. I don't advocate a blanket "you-kill,you-die" form of justice. That's no justice at all. If the killer welcomes death as a religious rite of passage, I would withhold his passport to heaven. Especially if he were likely to become a martyr.

Of course that would open the jihad-defence "protection" to any terrorist who got caught, so even that would have to be very carefully considered....

I was having a PM conversation with someone else in the thread a few minutes ago and I'll reproduce part of that here:

As I said, I'd rather see 100 guilty man go free than one innocent man hanged. But there are cases where all the evidence -- witnesses, forensics including DNA and other things — is so overwhelming that there can be no defence other than diminished capacity or N/G by reason of mental defect or insanity. In those cases I think the person should make the call to live or die, provided he/she becomes stable enough to make the decision. If not, keep them away from society with a life sentence.

But I think the John Wayne Gaceys, Jeffey Dahmers, D.C. loop snipers, Timothy McVeys, etc. of the world should be executed.

With special cases such as bin Laden, Saddam, Milosevic, Hitler, Idi Amin and butchers of that ilk, some political considerations would have to come into it -- principally whether executing them would create a matryr for other crazies to use.
Those might more effectively be handled by putting them in 12 X 12 cells with TV cameras on 24/7 for a little "reality TV."

cheers,

david