I'm a serious pacifist, Bill, and I agree with John that we really don't have the right to take the life of another human being, no matter what that person has done. I'll add a self-defense clause to that, but only if the person presents a direct and immediate threat.
Yeah, yeah, I can think of all kinds to reasons to justify rationalize killing - but then the killing will never stop, because people always have good reasons for doing what they do. I think that Europe has proved that less-violent responses to crime can be more effective than the American Way of fighting violence with violence.
Our prisons and our capital punishment have not made America a safer place.

By the way, the Catholic Church is officially opposed to capital punishment, and it has opposed the American wars in the Persian Gulf. This makes conservative American Catholics very nervous. They like to condemn us liberals for being "cafeteria Catholics" and tending to ignore some policies...but they do an interesting dance in trying to explain how opposition to the death penalty is "not really" Catholic policy.

-Joe-