Subject: Re: Federal death penalty
My opinion is that incarceration is about safeguarding the general population rather than exacting punishment. The length of incarceration is set secondary to the crime. Some criminals do repent, and some crimes are so egregious that society cannot accept repentance nor offer redemption.

The price for exacting a death penalty is the inevitable execution of innocents. While I can't deny the satisfaction and/or closure that loved ones are given, only a sentence of life without parole, as a maximum, reflects a society that has moved beyond beheadings and stoning. Dressing up an execution in technology is no less blood thirsty than what we see in societies we consider primitive. Blood thirst is blood thirst.