A death sentence or life sentence is simply an admission of an incomplete or inferior criminal justice system. The Norwegian justice system has some of the lowest recidivism or repeat offense rates in the world. They have no life or death sentence, and I believe the logest sentence served was 21 years. They proved it was possible, and in the process, proved that recidivism, or the need for life or death sentences, is a failure on the part of the justice system.

**TL;DR** - **Surely this come down to a question of whether it is ever right to kill someone?** Were this argument to ever be considered valid, it would need to be established what these crimes are. The most obvious crime would be murder, but then it must be asked whether it is right to punish a murderer by killing them. The justice system should provide judgements and dispense punishments but with some morality. That is to say, those dispensing the punishments should not reflect the behaviour of those they are punishing. For that reason, the death penalty lowers the justice system to the level of those they are punishing.

Until the justice system is completely empty of prejudice and fault, the death penalty cannot be ethical. There are always wrongly accused people who suffer imprisonment, and if we kill them, we can never make the injustice right.

Nope. If you believe, as I do, that all people can be reformed then the primary function of the prison system should be to reform criminals and they should be ceaseless and relentless in this task. If any branch of the state executes criminals under the death penalty then it has failed its people.

The major purpose of the death penalty is to make sure those who commit crimes will always have to pay: even with their lives. I personally believe there is no hope in making a psychopath feeling any guilt.