yeah this is one of the things that troubled me while studying psychology... What do you do with people who commit horrible crimes, but who's upbringing was cruel, violent and mentally abusive to the point of parial insanity (go get yourself some statistics on people with DID or Parnoid Schizophrenia who have had abusive/violent childhoods... your jaw will drop)?
So where do we place the blame, and how do we deal with these people? I agree, most of them would be most easily dealt with by a death penalty (well, if it weren't for all the red tape) but that seems sort-of counterlogical doesn't it? If somebody violates our ethics and humanity by doing these horrible deeds, they're very clearly subscribing to an entirely different set of standards than we, if any at all. How then, knowing this, can we further violate our own ethics and humanity by taking another life? Furthermore, I would argue that its far worse for we, the sane, to take a life of somebody who is insane than the reverse. Its quite obviously no less horrible, but certainly, phiolosophically, equally as twisted, if not more-
K