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"I would also feel horrible if I had to take a life. Yes, it would be your responsibility, but nevertheless, you have the power but would not give it to 40 million citizens in California collectively. That is what I don't get. You have the power but deny it to others, even after a murder is committed. At least we, as the state, are putting to death a murderer. You would feel badly, but you still put to death someone before he did physical harm. There is the paradox. It's okay for you to determine time, method, and circumstances, but not for the state."

You're missing one thing, here: immediacy. I do grant the state the right to kill someone. Law enforcement does it all the time...in immediate situations. Sometimes they're justified. Sometimes it's later determined that they're not. However, it is only in immediate situations where deadly force is allowed.

Same thing here. Once a murder has taken place and time has passed, the immediacy is gone. At that point, the situation changes dramatically. We have other recourse for punishment of acts that have taken place.

This is why cops are often given a walk when they act wrongly in an immediate situation. It IS possible for them to make a mistake and wrongly use deadly force, but we give them a pass many times, due to the immediacy.

That's the difference. To deliberately decide to take someone's life when no immediate situation requires it is where I draw my ethical line. Others may disagree, and that's fine. As I said, I'm not picketing any executions, despite my disagreement with them. If that's the law, then I will respect it. If given an opportunity to vote against the death penalty, I will.

But it is you who is setting the conditions of immediacy. Why do you get to set those conditions? To support your position? The state sets conditions for which cases qualify for the death penalty. Those aren't as valid as yours? That is 40 million people dedicing on conditions. You are just one person determing the conditions under which you think it is okay. Again, you have the right to take a life under your terms and conditions, but you deny the same right to the state. Pardon me, but it doesn't seem logical. You want to have more power over life and death than the state, but you are not constrained by a judge, jury, and endless appeals. Don't you seem to have too much power?

That's the difference. To deliberately decide to take someone's life when no immediate situation requires it is where I draw my ethical line.

Yours is a very reasonable position, and were it the law I could live with it.

I view the death penalty a little different than some. I don't care about punishment or deterrence. I view it like surgery at the societal level. Just as a person has a right to cut out a clump of cells that has proven to be dangerous... civilization has a right to remove those members that it chooses.

But what we should not do is what we are doing today. That is, we've not really ever chosen between life-in-prison and the death penalty. In a strange quirk of history we've fallen into doing ~both~ to the same criminal. We lock up somebody for 25 years and *then* finally take them out. It's worse than either would be alone.