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She herself acknowledged feeling “real violent anger” when first shown photographs of the suspects. But on reflection, she said, “I just don’t see what purpose is served in putting them to death.”

This faux pastor still doesn't get it.

Respect for life requires that you put down vicious beasts so they can't kill again. Anything less dishonors the memory and denies justice to this murdered mother and her daughters. It also puts other innocents at risk.

So, The Rev. Diana Jani Druck says maybe it would be OK to execute them, since the rapist-murderers are white. If they had been black, that would have been a different matter.

Still, she isn’t sure.

I honestly don't understand the moral confusion abundant in this sort of case. Putting to death people who tied up two children, sexually abused them, and then made them watch helplessly as their abusers pour gasoline around their beds and then torched them to hide the evidence does not make us just like them. Were we "just like them" we would be capable of raping and murdering innocent children. This is not that, and to pretend that it is the same thing is an outrageous insult to the memory of the victims.

Nor is it "vengeance." Vengeance would be for the family to exact personal revenge in the form of violence. It is retribution, a right accorded the State in the place of personal vengeance in the interest of social order and a respect for the law. There is nothing immoral in retribution. There is a great deal that is immoral in granting a criminal immunity from the consequences of his actions because the punishment is disagreeable. It's supposed to be.