You must live in clown world, have no moral compass and missing key components of an education. Your views below are complete nonsense. You obviously don't get the concept of FAFO. Swift retribution is the only moral answer. That's what real men and real patriots do. They eliminate evil from the earth when faced with it. Ditch your touchy feely sensibilities and grow a pair. We can't fix this kind of stupid. If you're lucky one day you'll see the world for what it really is. Yup it's pretty caveman mentality.
Discussion
I don't believe in retributive justice unless there is a situation where lethal force is the only way to prevent someone from committing more harm
LOL that's how you create Evil in this world. Evil that grows exponentially under favourable circumstances.
You don't have perfect information, and neither does the audience watching your actions.
Consequently, you will cock it up and harm an innocent sooner or later. Or the audience will cock it up and wrongly assume that you did.
Both of these lead to uncontrolled escalation under unfavourable circumstances, and "mowing the grass" under favourable circumstances.
Due process is a set of tools for mitigating these problems. Its implementation is necessarily human and imperfect, but all societies that have tried to do without it have self-destructed, either directly or by making too many enemies.
I love when people like yourself can properly articulate the reasons for these valuable systems. So many people simply believe that they're good, without understanding the exact "why."
Reactions like this make me wonder if you've read books like Lord of the Flies.
Of course I have... That and hundreds of other books related to the human condition. At some point our society pivoted to moral relativism. I'm of the school that moral absolutes remain. Wanton disregard for human life is punishable by removing the offender(s) from the gene pool decisively and permanently. It's like Sodom and Gomorrah all over again. Evil exists. It must be judged and terminated. You don't have to buy that line of thinking. Suffice it to say no one wants me on the jury at trial if they are a mass murderer; nor have me as a soldier of the state being designated a target in my crosshairs.
Change my mind.
I dont believe our society has "fallen into moral relativism" by any means. Property crime, murder, pedophilia, adultery, lying, etc- are all still seen by society as a negative thing. My problem is that there is a lack of education of secular ethical systems in the education system. I would rather people know the "why" behind their moral and ethical positions.
I dont believe capital punishment sends a good message to society at large. I dont think our criminal justice system should be based in retribution or justice. I think rehabilitation is possible for many forms of criminality, including murderers. Sometimes its not possible, and in that case we should let them reflect on their wrongdoing until they die. If they want to voluntarily opt for euthanasia, I would be fine with that. But only if they had a living environment that is considered humane.