The simple formula is that the severity of the punishment increases with the severity of the crime. Of course, when a murder occurs, the murderer should not be executed in the manner in which he or she killed his or her victim. However, the criminal should pay a penalty that is roughly equal to the loss incurred by the crime. In most cases of murder, where life is so grotesquely cheapened, the only punishment that can even approach that tremendous loss is execution. With the case of the Holocaust, it is impossible to even fathom a punishment fitting of the crime.
Execution certainly is the most fair and just punishment available after a heinous crime occurs.
John's response to Dan Lewerenz's column. What our criminal justice system seeks to achieve is justice, and the death penalty is just. Death-penalty opponents expend a lot of time and energy offering improvements in the system but little time explaining why it is wrong to execute the perpetrators of the Holocaust, for example. This is the same question facing Kansans today. Suggesting that the death penalty is bad because it's not a good deterrent is also sidestepping the moral question.