Some people said she had killed them because she was severely depressed. George W. Bush says that he reviews each case to make sure he is absolutely certain a person did it before he allows a Texas execution to go ahead. I have argued in the past that the death penalty was justified, in certain brutal cases, on the basis of the social contract. We forgo individual revenge, deferring to the law, but depend upon a certainty that the law will give us a justice that must include appropriate harshness. If the law fails in that task, I said, and people see that evil is fecklessly tolerated, then the social contract disintegrates.
Society needs a measure of homeopathic revenge.
But I have changed my mind about capital punishment. I think those arguing in favor of capital punishment now are indulging in a form of nostalgia. Capital punishment no longer works as a morality play. Maybe most of our moral opinions are formed by emotions and aesthetic reactions. Having lost its moral meaning, it has become as immoral as any other expression of violence.