I think the proper use of capital punishment should be defined as certain massive crimes (like murder, defined by the society as a whole) where we simply have drawn the line as the crime being too terrible (in essence, where we - as a society - have decided that those who do it are inherently beyond redemption) and those cases where rehabilitation (within a system - and we don't have this today in the US - where rehabilitation is available and generally effective) is impossible.

Oh that's alright, anyone who's that broken should be first in line for execution. They don't need to set children on fire twice to convince me of that.

Perhaps there is some circumstance in which lighting children on fire wouldn't automatically qualify someone for execution, but I don't care to explore all the different circumstances we'd have to in order to find such a case. Suffice it to say that - as a general rule - things like murder and setting children on fire ought to be automatic.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here. I consider it a proper use of the state's authority to execute convicted criminals when they execute a convicted murderer. When I'm talking about this, I don't mean an angry father who walks in on his child's molester and beats him to death, nor do I mean someone who falls asleep at the wheel and strikes and kills a pedestrian. I mean someone who knowingly, consciously, willfully makes an effort to maliciously kill another human being without some major mitigating circumstances present. What else are we to do with such a person? A person who robs a liquor store is making a poor choice and hopefully can be rehabilitated such that they won't make similarly poor choices in the future. Someone who has no difficulty taking human life is fundamentally broken in a way we can't comprehend and should simply be removed from society. Prisons are still a part of society inasmuch as members of our society live and worth there.

No it doesn't, unless you believe that prison guards, prison staff, and other prisoners who are in the process of being rehabilitated are not part of our society. The expectation with converting all death penalty cases to life in prison is that we're going to take the most violent, dangerous, destructive people in the world, put them all in one place, and expect a segment of society to wait on them hand and foot for the rest of their lives. Anyone wishing to make that happen should sign up for guard duty with those prisoners. Otherwise, hypocrisy.

They aren't "permanently removed from society" just because you, personally, don't have to interact with them on a daily basis. Someone else still does and you're putting their life (in fact, thousands of lives) at risk because of it.

Life in prison without parole is a death sentence; merely by different means. If we can't ever execute anyone because we can't be 100% certain of their guilt, then why is it morally or ethically sound to allow potentially innocent people to rot in prison for the rest of their lives? Or even just for a few decades? There's almost certainly more innocent people who've been rotting in prison for decades than innocent people who've been sent to Death Row. Not just nominally, but due to the higher burden of proof (and endless appeals system) for Death Row prisoners, I would suggest it's a virtual certainty that the rates of innocent people rotting in prison for the rest of their lives is also much higher. Why is that more acceptable than executions?

They're committing murder. The state is not (by the very definition of murder). I would submit that all murderers should qualify for the death penalty. I would extend that out to any other individual who cannot be rehabilitated (assuming an effective means of rehabilitation is in place - which is admittedly not our current prison system).

And keep in mind, this is all merely a thought exercise as it's all predicated upon major, fundamental reforms from the police investigations to the courtroom trials to the prison system. I'm not defending the criminal justice system we have today as it's vastly more flawed than need be and I'm not even defending the use of the death penalty within that system. I seek merely to demonstrate that there is nothing inherently wrong or unjust about the state executing guilty individuals who are truly beyond rehabilitation.

One is too many to have die in a prison cell after years or decades of rotting there. The effect is still the same; an innocent man dies at the hands of the state. Based on this, we should release all prisoners because we can't ever be 100% certain any one of them is guilty, yes?

(if this ever happens, I'll be on an airplane beforehand going somewhere far away while the rest of you sort out the consequences)

That's absurd. The very, very worst case you could make against a governor would be conspiracy to commit involuntary manslaughter, which isn't even defined as a crime anywhere that I'm aware. You could possibly make a case for involuntary manslaughter against the police, prosecutor, and jury, but that's also asinine at best. Further, I don't know of anyone who would support the death penalty for involuntary manslaughter. Finally, the premise itself is absurd. Outside of fraud or negligence, there's no reasonable case to be made at all. Now if the prosecutor withheld critical evidence, I would fully support going after them with the full force of the law. Same for the police and anyone else involved.

The first is only the case because we have an inefficient system and because we recognize how easily we get convictions wrong (thus a nearly endless appeals process in an attempt to avoid executing an innocent person). Fix the system, streamline the outcomes. The second case is essentially the same as the first. We understand our current system to be less effective at distinguishing guilt from innocence and we understand at least part of that to be due to biases built into the system based on race, money, family, fame, etc.

None of this an inherent quality to executions; you're merely describing the issues with the system we have today. I don't take issue with that and in fact outlined some of how I would suggest we go about resolving that. Fair, equitable, efficient, effective justice is the goal; not a description of what we have today.

Now here you're incorrect; not about the primal urges, but about how they apply to state executions. The idea behind the existing system of executions is supposed to be that all emotion is removed and an objective standard is implemented by a society wishing to rid itself of individuals deemed beyond redemption. I would agree that we often fail to meet the ideals of that idea, but that does not mean it need always be that way. With a reformed system that has incorporated all the knowledge of how and why we get arrests and convictions wrong and a reformed prison system that successfully rehabilitates people instead of turning them into more vicious and efficient criminals, we're inevitably left with a group of people who are beyond rehabilitation. They're so fundamentally broken, so destructive to our society, that the best outcome for society as a whole is to remove those individuals permanently from our society (which includes prison guards and prisoners who actually can be rehabilitated). The only way to do so effectively and humanely is execution.

This is all simply an intellectual exercise at this point. I don't expect these reforms to be made in any widespread sense anywhere in the US any time soon (if ever). I'm not defending the existing system's problems. I'm not claiming those problems don't exist. I'm simply demonstrating that there is nothing inherently savage, primal, or unjust about the death penalty itself. Its implementation in our existing system is as flawed as the rest of our existing system, but there is nothing intrinsically flawed in the concept of executing those who are guilty beyond reasonable doubt and beyond rehabilitation.

As I stated, we need significant improvements in our system starting with an overhaul from the police investigations to the courtrooms and everything in between. We should learn from cases where we know we got it wrong so we can avoid making those mistakes again. Once all systemic problems are resolved and actual rehabilitation with measurably positive outcomes are established in the prison system, determine who can be rehabilitated and do so, who is not and execute them.

I'm not expecting these changes to happen today, tomorrow, or in ten years. I'm describing an ideal wherein we would apply evidence and outcome based approaches to doing a righteous justice system where the most expedient and efficient means of meeting the goals of society are employed.

There is no difference in the end result to the individual dying. There is certainly a difference to the guards exposed to a violent predator for potentially decades on end and there is certainly a difference in the overall risk of recidivism while that individual is alive. The point was simply that a sentence of life in prison is effectively the same as a sentence of death in prison from the perspective of the individual who's dying in prison.

Being wrongly convicted and dying in a gas chamber due to organ failure is different from being wrongly convicted and dying in a cell due to organ failure how, exactly?

We should make every effort to ensure no innocent person is wrongfully convicted. We need a lot of reforms throughout our criminal justice systems to make that happen. We should be taking lessons for groups like the Innocence Project to better understand where we're going wrong and improve. We should look at the rules of evidence and how juries deliberate to determine what works well and what has poor outcomes. We should do things like this throughout the process and on a regular basis.

But at the end of the day, we aren't throwing every cell open to let everyone roam free on the off chance that somebody innocent slipped through the cracks. The system should be fair, equitable, efficient, and effective. We should rehabilitate those who can be rehabilitated and execute those who cannot. Keep it simple, efficient, and constantly improving. It will never be perfect. We, as any society, must accept that fact. And whether someone dies in a box of old age or dies in a box by execution, where that person is innocent, we have all failed them. We must make every reasonable effort to avoid that possibility, accept our mistakes, learn from them, and constantly improve. And yes, we're a long way away from any of that today. I welcome an overhaul of our system.

Wait, doesn't the family also object to their loved one being returned to them deceased? Seems like we really aren't taking their objections too seriously already.

Fine, we'll ship all our worst child raping, torturing, completely batshit crazy murderers to the EU and they can deal with them.

I struggled against suggesting helium, for obvious reasons.

Why on Earth do we need observers? Make the chamber windowless, run it for several hours with a heart monitor that turns on after say a couple hours, and then come by and collect the corpse. How hard is that? You can use any gas that can replace oxygen slowly enough to not cause pain and suffering. Plenty of research on that one.

Just another argument for using simpler methods for execution. Take a gas chamber and replace the oxygen slowly enough that the individual loses consciousness, then eventually dies peacefully. Why we've come up with all these extraordinarily complex methods of carrying out what ought to be an absurdly simple sentence is beyond me. Put the person in a chair, play some classical music, drop the O2 levels, and let the life of a violent and destructive individual end so the rest of society may be spared.

To say nothing of the logistical headaches of range qualifications during jury selection.

We should be applying the lessons learned from the Innocence Project to better our justice system, not giving up on the idea that guilty people are being found, tried, convicted, and properly sentenced.

Could you please explain the difference between someone dying in an state execution chamber and someone dying in their prison cell of organ failure ("old age")?

Seems like neither is desirable and each has the same effect. While we should certainly do all we can to ensure no innocent people are sentenced to anything, that doesn't extend to letting everyone out of prison because there might be somebody innocent locked up with all the guilty people.