[Elspode]

Here in the Heartland, three young me have turned themselves in to police. They are suspected of having gang raped a young girl in an abandoned drug house in KC, then driving to St. Joseph, breaking into a house and killing, execution style, the young couple who lived there.

It seems they thought the occupants of the St. Joseph home were drug dealers whom they were either seeking to rip off or from whom to extract revenge. Unfortunately, the young couple were not the drug dealers the trio sought; they were instead merely a young couple who had moved into the apparent drug dealer's former residence.

So...if guilty, *why* should these three psychopaths not die, exactly? I mean, assuming they are indeed guilty (it is unclear yet whether they have confessed, but they turned themselves in despite the police having broadcast only that they were looking for the responsible parties. No names were named, no specifics on age, race, gender or number of suspects...they just knew the heat was on, and they turned themselves in via a prominent community activist).

If the people involved were *my* family members, innocent victims of stupid, blind, degenerate criminality, I not only would want them executed, but I would campaign to be allowed to pull the switch/push the button/pull the trigger/whatever it took to make it happen.

And I'm a peace-loving Pagan sort of guy, too. I am, however, enough of a realist to know that you do not leave a cancer untreated, and such criminals are indeed cancers on society. They need to be excised.

The only sure fire guarantee that murderers won't kill again is the death penalty. I'm okay with that, most especially in cases where confessions or DNA evidence makes for conclusive evidence.