This should be a contreversal comment, so I'm going to say now that I'm just posting this rebuttal and not getting into an e-argument.

The criminal system isn't for punishment. It's for reform. It's not to 'get back' at people, it's to help integrate people back into society and act as a deterrent to stop crime in the first place. You're not trying to 'execute this fucker and others like him', you're trying to figure out what's wrong, how you can reform (if possible), and deter other crimes like it. If you're just executing it's a hell of a deterrence, but you're not reforming at all.

Remember the Oslo masscare? Read up on the perpetrator and his sentence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Behring_Breivik

If I were king of the world, I wouldn't sentence Anders to death either. It's sad that he turned out a madman and did what he did but surely you can't kill people who are mentally ill for being so.

There's a big difference between somebody who's medically declared insane and a member of a terrorist organisation who killed people as his masters wanted for the sole purpose of creating terror.

A bedrock principle of a civilized society is that the price to be paid to ensure that no innocent is ever falsely convicted, is that some guilty might be acquitted.

The death penalty is the ultimate irreversible penalty. Don't you think it's better to give people life in prison instead of death.

You should read up about the death penalty as a deterrent. Do you really think Ajmal expected to even get out of the mission alive? Do you think he didn't know about the death penalty if he managed to escape alive.

How do you execute him - you don't.

Every person ever convicted is, in theory, because there was enough conclusive proof. Mistakes will always happen.

Keep him in jail for life. Have a solid policy of not negotiating with terrorists. (Kidnap victims should be immediately considered murdered, with their salvation a potential bonus of whatever operation you carry out to resolve it, not an overriding goal.) Demonstrate that policy resolutely.

Do you really believe that type of policy could be instituted in the real world? If you were responsible for the decision and it was your kid kidnapped, would you consider her dead? The biological imperative to protect one's offspring is too strong for that (much less the imperative for politicians to CYA).

You may argue that it is a false dichotomy, but I disagree, because the people who will kill to get their compadres released will adjust their tactics until they find the lever that works.

There's a reason we specifically don't let the relatives of victims make choices here. This "you would never accept this policy if it were your child" argument is really irritating. No, I wouldn't, and that has no bearing whatsoever on the merits of the policy.

I agree that it would probably be fairly tough to institute in a democratic country. But I think it could be doable in a reasonably (but realistically!) rational country. The long-term effect should be a vast reduction in the quantity of kidnappings, since you render them ineffectual.

Such policies are already implemented sporadically. Look at various navies' responses to Somali pirates and their hostage-taking, or the way the US negotiates (or, rather, doesn't) with the occasional terrorist who kidnaps a US citizen and threatens to behead them.

Your thesis is that without the death penalty there would be more Ajmal Kasabs. That there are would-be-terrorists who don't act because of the death penalty.

To me, that's absurd on its face. Such persons are beyond reason. Don't forget, amongst this group are suicide bombers.

In the U.S. at least, its widely accepted that the death penalty is not a deterrent for murder, much less terrorism.[1]

[1]http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/files/DeterrenceStudy2009.pd...)

Would you rather have him claim to die as a marytr and have his friends and family claim he is in heaven with his 70 virgins. His rotting in prison sends a stronger symbol that the state can keep a man down. At least in prison he can be humaliated rather than elevated to the level of a hero.

Its one thing to die a hero another to sit in a cell for forty years in your own filth.

Being caught on tape or identified by an eyewitness isn't conclusive evidence of guilt. The guy in this article who was wrongly executed looked almost exactly like the person who actually committed the murder.

Why do you see execution as the only option here?

Yeah! To show this guy that killing is wrong, we'll kill him!

To be honest, sometimes I find the death penalty to be an easy way out for the criminal.

As for Ajmal, I wouldn't want him to be executed simply because that is probably what he expected.