Look into their cold dead eyes of any killer and know this person needs to be put underground. That is why we have the death penalty, as a punishment for evil doers so they will never be able to do this again. So I would put to you this simple fact, death is an escape from any punishment that a killer may face. We are adding and abetting them in said escape. They don’t care if they live or if they die. They don’t care for your rules or societies concerns. They simply don’t care. So we kill them and make us feel safer. Our prison system is supposed to be about reform. Well when dead you can deform, not reform. To reform, you must suffer. To suffer you must feel. To feel when you are dead inside is only possible with time, lots of time. The days grow weary upon the soul. Time passes endless and yet ceases not when the four walls close in on you. In maximum security, you only had time. Time to sit; time to wait and time to regret. In 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Timothy McVeigh went to his death penalty smiling. After all, it was 168 to 1 with his death. He escaped punishment. All the state did was to take his life. Today some 22 years later, is he was still alive, he would be in the same cell, with the same walls, the same view, and same 1 hour of isolated outdoors he had the day before and the day before that. Now, if he had been left alive, he would be alone. Long since forgotten. Virtually ignored by all. And yet his mind would have all the time in the world to think of what he did. To think of what he accomplished in his slaughter of how many babies in that day care? There were 19 baby angels murdered by him. If no one else, they might have sparked a message in his heart. They might have invaded his dreams at night. They might have tormented him as his ‘reward’, punishment to any other way of thinking. Scrooge changed over night with but three ghosts. How many nights and how many of the 168 ghost would have haunted his nights? For this, we shall never know.
In 1972 at the Munich Olympics’, Palestinian terrorist captured and killed 11 athletes. In the end three terrorist lived to tell their tale. While open to debate, they still fear the wraith of the Jewish State upon them. MOSSAD still hunts for them. Hunt being the right word. Now to be caught they having lived 45 years, they will die with much to lose and many more to regret their passing. When someone has death in their eyes, like those terrorists, or any child soldier they are dead within. You cannot hurt them or harm them. You cannot punish or reform. All you can do is kill them. With the passage of time, and the growing shadows of years, that death turns to life, and the fear of death creeps in with days. Then and only then, does time become the punishment itself. What waits upon the other side, if anything? Will it be seen as in favour of the slaughter of innocent? Or will it lead to an eternal torment and punishment to last all of the ages. We shall never know on this side of the vale, but rushing killers to the other side is not the answer. Let them live. Let them learn to fear that final trip. Let them know regret for their actions and finally let them understand the cruelest of all punishments is not to kill them, but to let them live in a cell for the rest of their days.