I think your position on capital punishment is reasonable and morally-defensible (although I don’t agree with it), but I’m curious - would you impose the death penalty on Tsarnaev if it was your call?
My “middle ground” on capital punishment would be to limit it to cases in which at least two of the following circumstances were fulfilled: that the perpetrator volunteered a confession that was not coerced; that the conviction was supported by incontrovertible physical evidence (DNA, fingerprints, videocam footage, etc); that the conviction was supported by at least two eyewitness accounts; and/or that the perp was convicted of more than one capital crime in more than one separate trial. Lots of room for legal fuzziness in those conditions, I realize, but hopefully the legal system could deal with those, and that sort of system would (I would hope) go about as far as one could to minimize death penalty mistakes.
I temper my emotions with reason and I see my view of state laws as dangerous. Few deserve to die more than Tsarnaev. That said, allowing the state to kill a citizen opens the door. With a few legislative moves the state can decide that having too large a magazine is death worthy