The state dispenses the punishment. Note the avoidance of personal responsibility here, something that stands in stark contrast with the very positivism that the governor advocates here. Because the system cannot be questioned by positivism, any problems which arise are those of maladjusted or evil-choosing individuals. Here the governor tries to say he is merely following orders, an excuse that was found wanting in the My Lai investigations and at the Nuremburg Trials. Every player in the process of state killing bears responsibility for the outcome, if for nothing more than their individual role in that outcome.
People demand certain punishment.
In other words, some cases are so horrible that the people gain a right to be horrible in return. If the state recognizes the wrongness of this act, as the introductory language to almost every single state statute regarding murder laboriously lays out, it is hard to see how the commission of this act in a manner deemed heinous somehow creates a right to engage the same wrongness legislators have clearly stated are incompatible with the values of the people of the state. It's what people want in terms of justice. In other words, the people are prepared to settle for revenge rather than justice. Justice here is distorted into the repetition of the act we know is wrong.