Let me say that first: I'm against death penalty but I would kill tyrants in some situations.

Two arguments I have read here I consider not well thought:

(1) How someone can be against death penalty with the argument that life imprisonment is the worse sentence I cannot understand.

(2) 'One's too many' is a bad argument. It is a decision under uncertainty and it has two possibilities of error: An innocent man is sentenced and a guilty man walks free. You cannot eliminate both errors at the same time, you only can minimise one error at the expense of the other one.

Surely you all remember enough cases in which a (later found guilty) man has walked free and has been caught after some more ugly murders. Would you say about the women tortured before being killed 'one's too many' and therefore plead for life imprisonment at the slightest suspicion? You wouldn't.

'One's too many' is an emotional appeal without giving a deep thought.

Wolfgang