> > Not to execute vicious murderers, rapists & traitors is a profound miscarriage of justice. > That's a minority position. It's also correct. If 100 other

> > Not to execute vicious murderers, rapists & traitors is a profound miscarriage of justice. > That's a minority position. It's also correct. If 100 other countries jumped off of a bridge, would you? Although, if you do want to argue from popularity, polls consistently show majority support for capital punishment even in countries without it. From that standpoint, abolition of execution is undemocratic. There are many crimes for which the only just sentence is death (c.f. the Oklahoma man executed some time ago, who raped & buried alive a young woman, or the man in Washington, D.C. who tortured & murdered a family in their home): not to impose it is itself unjust. For, say, Hideki Tojo to have died peacefully in his bed after the deaths of millions would have been a moral outrage: his hanging was the only appropriate sentence. The State's monopoly on force is predicated on it assuming the duty of exacting vengeance on behalf of its citizens: if a State refuses to exact that vengeance in every circumstance, regardless of evidence and certainty, then its monopoly on violence loses its legitimacy.