I believe we must abolish the death penalty. We cannot become murderers. I cannot even imagine what it would be like to send 2000 volts through three electrodes attached to the head by a tightly fitting cap and strapped to a person's ankles. I dare not imagine the gassing of a human being or hanging a person or the loud sounds of a person's lungs being emptied of air by lethal injection before the poison stops the heart. I do not want the State to do this on my behalf.
Capital punishment is an ignoble, irrevocable act of revenge.
Once someone has been executed, you can't go back. You can't ask for forgiveness. You can't say you are sorry and make it all better. When Samuel Pisar, one of the youngest survivors of the Nazi death camps, wrote his memoirs, he recounted an occasion in which he first responded to a fellow student's practical joke with punches and rage but then caught himself. He was mortified.