The killing of an individual is a horrendous act. Therefore, to kill someone for killing someone is double the immorality.
Furthermore, when that killing does not achieve anything positive (like learning how to prevent murders happening again, or showing the perpetrator the error of his ways), it is pointless and ceases to be punishment - moving into the category of revenge, which is again, an immoral and unjustified motive.
Even further, unless the perpetrator is a true psychopath, or sociopath, or the crime is accidental, no murder is performed without an extreme emotional motivation, and thus a lack of reason. The first two exceptions obviously require treatment, while the third is obviously not to blame (and probably suffering enough guilt to be self-punished), but to rationally decide to kill the emotional murderer is to perform a worse crime than the original perpetrator, who at the instance of the crime had lost access to their rationality.
Therefore, one can conclude that the death sentence, is not just an illogical punishment, but an immoral one.
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The above argument was written by a friend of mine, I don't agree on every aspect, but its interesting nonetheless.
[This message has been edited by dearestnight_falcon (edited 08-14-2004).]
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