[sneak]

If you don't believe that people have a right to life, I suppose that being murdered by the state is just another notch on the spectrum of "acceptable punishment".

It's an odd contradiction to me that people who support the death penalty are mostly not ok with the state using, for example, punitive rape as a punishment, but killing is somehow okay, if the crime is severe enough.

[dEnigma]

How are rape and the death sentence related? You could just as well say that it's weird how people can support taking someones's freedom and locking them away, but are not okay with raping them.

[sneak]

Because we as a society have generally reached a consensus that premediated killing of human beings is one of the worst crimes possible.

The fact that it is regarded by some as an acceptable punitive measure carried out by the state, whereas other, lesser crimes against human beings are deemed "off limits" for such purposes, seems to me to expose an inherent contradiction. To avoid the contradiction, either both should be acceptable, or neither.

Presently there seems to be a slight majority consensus on Earth that the correct answer is "neither", with the overall trend suggesting that the rest of the planet will get there in another couple hundred years.

[hibern8]

I could not agree more. It is barbaric and sends an incongruent message to society. How are we to teach people the value of a life by taking one?

[toomuchtodo]

There is a broad spectrum of value that is up for debate. There are amazing human beings, but also vile human beings.