Quote Originally Posted by kagemusha
You are good and kind men Adrian II and Marcellus,better then me.
I appreciate the compliment, but I can't help feeling it is undeserved. A lifelong prison sentence is about as bad as the death penalty, even worse according to more than a few people.

This is not a matter of kindness versus cruelty. The question is whether you want to be tough on crime as well as on criminals. One argument against the death penalty in terrorist cases is that it makes martyrs out of young people who may well gain new insights and come to abhor their crimes later in (prison) life, thus setting an entirely different and much better example to potential sympathisers.