> If justice requires a life for a life, you don't scrimp on that, either. You pay whatever monetary, emotional, and moral costs are necessary for justice to be

> If justice requires a life for a life, you don't scrimp on that, either. You pay whatever monetary, emotional, and moral costs are necessary for justice to be done. How exactly do you reach this conclusion, I mean what underlying principle is this based on? I ask this because the question that immediately comes to my mind is that if this principle were true (which I dispute) then it wouldn't matter at all whether the monetary cost was $100 or $100 trillion dollars per execution. This is obviously not true, therefore the cost a society is willing to pay must be based on something else. In my opinion it is based on a combination of factors like how much available resources does a society have, how great is the need to deter others from committing the same crime (some countries have such high crime rates that they are actually destabilised by it) and what exactly is the value of a human life to a society. > If killing is always wrong That is only a question for persons that live in societies where violent crime doesn't exist (utopia) or for those who wouldn't use lethal force to protect their own lives in face of a life threatening attack. For all others this cannot be a question. Killing is justified in many cases and being able to defend one self is a useful skill everyone should aspire have.