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I couldn't DISagree more. On all three counts.

ALL arguments that advocate abolishing the death penalty for reasons of high expense, inefficiency, legal incompetence, misapplication, inability to console the victim's families, etc. etc. blah-rah-rah, are ALL fundamentally specious and fail to address the REAL REASON the death penalty is sanctioned in the first place.

In accordance with Aquinas and traditional Catholic theology, the purpose of the death penalty is EXPIATION. The guilty person who immorally and illegally (under God's law) takes the life of one of God's children offends God himself! The murderer has, thus, forfeited any claim to the right to life and must pay with his own life. The application of the death penalty is intended to make the perpetrator of this heinous crime right before God. "He who sheds man's blood shall his own blood be shed." By administering the death penalty, the malefactor is brought before God, who alone can administer any ultimate justice, and prepares the way for the salvation of the malefactor's immortal soul (if the killer is penitent)!

Aquinas rightly points out the benefits of removing the murderer from the community by establishing a general peace and equilibrium. Even so, Aquinas states that all other considerations made for (or against) the death penalty are secondary to EXPIATION. Look it up!

I agree with Bowzer regarding expiation, but I also wonder if Aquinas, in Ryan's quote, also implies that death for the wrongdoer brings finality, closure and enables the healing process for society as a whole, and is therefore worth it.

Personally, I am extremely attracted to another philosopher's view of the death penalty:

Now, suppose that the Judgment of the Supreme Court regarding them had been this: that every one should have liberty to choose between the punishment of Death or Penal Servitude for life. In view of such an alternative, I say that the Man of Honour would choose Death, and the Knave would choose servitude. This would be the effect of their human nature as it is; for the honourable man values his Honour more highly than even Life itself, whereas a Knave regards a Life, although covered with shame, as better in his eyes than not to be. The former is, without gainsaying, less guilty than the other; and they can only be proportionately punished by death being inflicted equally upon them both; yet to the one it is a mild punishment when his nobler temperament is taken into account, whereas it is a hard punishment to the other in view of his baser temperament. But, on the other hand, were they all equally condemned to Penal Servitude for life, the honourable man would be too severely punished, while the other, on account of his baseness of nature, would be too mildly punished. In the judgment to be pronounced over a number of criminals united in such a conspiracy, the best Equalizer of Punishment and Crime in the form of public Justice is Death. And besides all this, it has never been heard of, that a Criminal condemned to death on account of a murder has complained that the Sentence inflicted on him more than was right and just; and any one would treat him with scorn if he expressed himself to this effect against it... Emmanuel Kant, "The Philosophy of Law"

We seem to forget that life in prison is not a man's life, but worse than a dog's. Imagine a society that views the stripping of all of one's dignity and humanity for the rest of one's life as 'more humane' than death. That's us. If, God forbid, I am condemned of a capital crime, I will ask to die, rather than be treated like a rat in a cage.

SAN FRANCISCO
Man suspected in gang killings is slain
21-year-old gunned down while waiting at car repair shop
Jaxon Van Derbeken, Chronicle Staff Writer

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

A reputed gang member whom San Francisco police linked to five homicides was himself killed over the weekend, authorities said Monday.

Ronnie "Uda" Allen, 21, was shot to death when he came to pick up a friend's car after it was serviced at a shop at 269 Bayshore Blvd. at 4:30 p.m. Saturday, investigators said.

Police said the gunman confronted Allen as he waited at the cashier and opened fire, then chased him down and shot him in the head, execution style.

The gunman then got into a waiting silver Acura, authorities said. No arrests have been made.

Investigators said Allen was a member of the Big Block gang, which has engaged in an on-and-off war for several years with a rival Bayview gang called Westmob.

Allen was on probation for a drug offense and was charged last year with robbery and attempted murder, but the case against him fell apart.

Police suspected he was involved in gang killings and had arrested him several times in recent months in an effort to get him off the streets, though never on suspicion of murder. On one day, Allen was arrested twice for the same probation violation.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/12/14/BAG75ABDTC1.DTL

Man shot in car shop
By Alison Soltau | Staff Writer
Published on Monday, December 13, 2004

Police fear an end-of-the-year surge in gang-related homicides, which already have haunted The City this year, after a reputed gang leader was executed in a Bayview auto shop on Saturday.

A gunman burst into the store at 269 Bayshore Blvd. just before 5 p.m., and accosted Ronnie "Uda" Allen, 24, as he stood at the cash register waiting to pick up a friend's car, police said.

Allen ran into an office in the building and the gunman pursued him, shooting him multiple times in the head and body. He died at San Francisco General Hospital, said Officer Maria Oropeza.

Homicide investigators could not be reached Sunday, but police speculated it was gang-related because Allen was thought to be the head of the Big Block gang, which is feuding with other gangs.

"The department is concerned there could be more violence in terms of Allen's gang arming themselves and looking for revenge," said Officer Len Broberg of the Violent Crimes Taskforce.

The chilling slaying in the high-crime neighborhood pushed The City's homicide rate to 82 -- more than half of them gang-related -- officers say. In 2003, the total number of killings was 72.

http://www.sfexaminer.com/article/index.cfm/i/121304n_shooting