Carinthia

Although I believe in capital punishment for certain crimes doesn't mean I would be capable of doing the job. I don't like dirty public toilets either, but that doesn't mean that I am a hypocrit because I wouldn't want to go clean them myself. If we based all of our laws on whether WE persoanlly could do the job, could mean that many of our services would cease to exist. I view it as a public service. Eliminating child killers off the face of the earth, would be a huge public service, IMO. Keeping these brutal people in prison for life means nothing to them as I would guess that their idea of "life enjoyment" is on a much lower scale than the rest of us. The threat of life in prison is not enough of a deterent for them. As they are cowards by nature, the thing they would fear most is death.

Sure, there are different degrees of crime, we all know that. Crimes of passion, crimes of greed etc. Of course I would find it easier to off a child killer than I would a guy who killed his business partner over money or a spouse who killed a spouse because he/she found their spouse in bed with someone else. There could be extenuating circumstances to many crimes of murder and the death penalty doesn't always fit. Because of this, I would not want to personally pull the lever. However, I believe that sex crimes against children where rape and murder are the outcome, should be dealt with in the most harshest, serverest way possible. There is no reasoning behind brutal child killing crimes other than a perverted satisfaction, if you will. I would rather have my tax dollars used to pay someone to put these kinds of people to death than to have my tax dollars used to house and feed them for the next umpteen years while they spend their time watching TV and playing on the internet. So, to answer your question, yes I do believe that some who kill should spend the rest of their lives in prison and some other's should be put to death. Some crimes of murder do outrage me more than others. Sadly, in this day and age, nobody is spending the rest of their lives in prison are they? Perhaps our dissatisfaction and frustration with our justice system has now inspired us to revisit the death penalty.

When I first read your statement I recoiled too as I would never think that I could pull the lever, trigger or whatever. Then I got to thinking about the 9 year old girl who was raped and strangled by her stepfather and male friend this past week. Ya, I could pull the lever on these two.