Your post 6 is right on. We let emotions run away with us in these cases. All the getting drunk and macabe celebrating during an execution is a sign of a babyish society. It gives capital punishment itself, which is not practiced enough in our country, a bad connotation of mob delerium, and the lynching of innocents, and the cheering crowds at the burning of Christians at the stake, the guillotines in France, or the gallows in 18th Century England.
That's not how the death penalty should be. We should mourn that it has to be done at all - that anyone among us was murdered in the first place. It should be somber, and sober. It IS the STATE taking a life, after all, and we should be deadly serious about that.
Justice cannot be impartially administered while the prosecutors are wearing nooses and grim Reaper ties.
And to think that many on this thread support such barbaric nonsense is embarrasing...
I was ambivilent at first, and you and some others have clarified my position in this matter. I have come to the conclusion that you are correct. This type of discussion is what makes FR so great and truly allows one to see all different sides of issues so that one can make up their own mind.