ddw,

"Maybe you could enlighten me on this: "Recidivism has no meaning if the death penalty becomes a solution rather than a transforming experience for the killer." I have no idea what you're saying.."...

If a person goes back into prison after committing a terrible
crime such as murder, there is still a chance that life in
prison could mean something for that person and for society.
If that person is murdered in retribution by capital punishment, than there is no chance for this kind of transformation to happen.

In my view, retribution (capital punishment)doesn't serve society at all. It encourages a notion that killing solves something. It doesn't. It doesn't stop the process and never has. If anything, it exacerbates more killing and feuds that last over time.

I don't agree that the death penalty has stopped killing and may well encourage it.

Brucie, I don't believe that killing is ever right in war or on an individual level. The idea of a "just war" is repugnant to me.
War can never be just because the innocent are killed as well
as the guilty.

Some say it is necessary but I believe that non-violent resistance
works when it is consistenly employed. There are few examples
of this but notably Ghandi in India and King in the US.

The evidence for this is scant because the easier solution is to
go to war acting on the emotion of anger and revenge. Non-violent resistance requires a moral discipline checking raw and baser emotions. It requires as much as intensive
military training if not more and an equal if not more
amount of courage to pursue.

Killing for punishment does not lessen killing in general.
It celebrates it and encourages it in society. Life imprisonment however is a harder punishment (if punishment ever changes
anything) but it keeps the door open for a transformation of
character and behavior. That changes something.

Frank