Hope you rot in hell!!!!!

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Kucinich

Theory is nice, I suppose, but let's look at our Constitution, shall we? Note the phrase about avoiding cruel and unusual punishment.

Lethal injection isn't particularly cruel, and execution is not particularly unusual.

Nothing unusual about kill a helpless person at all.

[Kuciwalker]

Exactly, there isn't. In fact, it's extremely common, though that has decreased a bit from the historical average

[Imran Siddiqui]

So we're still left with the point that advocating the DP when you know the effects are all negative on society is still rather obviously a bad thing, and I find it blatantly immoral.

Good for you.

Note the phrase about avoiding cruel and unusual punishment. Now, if it was about retribution, why isn't it eye for an eye and the like?

Who says retribution has to be 100% equal? Equal enough.

How can you consider any punishment that makes crime worse as remotely desirable? What is the justification for it?

A moral justification that those men who commit incredibly heinous crimes should not be able to go on living.

The primary reason of establishing the trials was to stop the continuous cyvle of retribution found in blood feuds that was clearly detrimental to their society.

And so retribution was moved from the streets to the court rooms? It was nothing more than the government taking the power of retribution. An increase in the state's reach and power.

After all, we can't have people taking their revenge on certain people the state may want to protect.

any sense of "retribution" in the criminal code such as given above is ultimately based on protecting society, because it is believed that if one egregiously violates society's morals with impunity, it will lead to social breakdown and chaos.

It is not. Retribution in the criminal code is based on the idea that the offender is a moral agent who has earned punishment by his crime. Failure to punish refuses to recognize that the person is a moral agent, morally responsible for his own actions. Even if there is NO utilitarian purpose, the person deserves punishment for his acts.

Why punish unless some good comes of it? The retributivist would respond because it is right to do so.

You are looking at the criminal law from utilitarian eyes and thus don't see any reason to do something in the criminal code unless some measurable 'good' comes from it. The vast majority of criminal law was retributivist, which didn't care about the end good, but merely to punish those who violated the morals of society.