Not the Dostoyevsky kind but the real thing. As I've aged, I have softened on my stance on capital punishment. My moral side feels that some crimes deserve to be met with death, and my rational side see the flaws in the legal system: far too many errors, especially by "eyewitnesses", mandatory minimums, three strikes, unethical prosecutors. Between those two sides I see how many people we lock up (quite a few are innocent, some sentences don't fit the crimes), and wonder why we still have so much crime in comparison to countries less inclined to incarcerate criminals. I'm shocked at what can cost you your life in many places: drug convictions in Indonesia, blasphemy in Saudi Arabia (can't wait to visit!). Are we somehow a more "just" country because we reserve the death penalty for the most "heinous" of crimes?
Is our system of justice meant to punish, deter, or both? The advent of execution by lethal injection allowed us to see it as neither cruel nor unusual. Hangings, beheadings, and firing squads are now too barbaric. But as bunny ("Platoon") says "The only worry you got is dying. And if that happens, you won't know about it anyway." Maybe the method of execution is more about the conscience of those asked to carry it out. As a means to deter crime, no one can say for sure whether a criminal has been stopped short of carrying out a crime because of a potential death sentence. It didn't stop Clayton D. Lockett, but that doesn't mean it's not a deterrent. I understand why his victim's family might support this sentence.
When I add it all up, however, capital punishment is loosing its appeal (pun intended).