I still don't understand why people like you want the state to have the power over life and death. The government can't manage to get my tax return to me, how can they be trusted to kill someone?
I think this ruling might be injurious to states' rights, but how can giving the government less power be bad? The government is corrupt and stupid, and I want to live with as little of it as possible.
I didn't actually take a position on the death penalty at all. I merely commented on the problem of judicial abuse of power and how to counter it.
Personally, I am an obedient Catholic. The Pope tells me that the death penalty is not justified in the modern world, and I somewhat dourly accept that. Certainly I worry about the execution of the innocent.
Anyway, as to not "wanting" the state to have the power of life and death, it is nature of any vast and powerful organzation that has armed forces that it has the power of life and death. That is simply a given. For the police to be effective against the violent, they have to be armed, and that means sometimes that the police will execute someone on the spot, without trial, if that person is a violent menace to society.
That is the power of life and death. And police forces are indispensible for my safety.
Likewise, in a world full of bad, armed men, armies are indispensible for my safety. Once again, that's the state empowered with life and death, including the power to compel people to bear arms and possibly die in times of great danger.
There isn't any way around the power of life and death so long as there is power, and that is a given of nature.
All that remains to us is deciding who will wield that power, and what limits we want placed on it.
Personally, I think we ought to limit ourselves to not routinely executing killers, even though they richly deserve it, because we murder the innocent that way too. That is avoidable, and since we have the power to avoid it, I agree with my Pope that we should.
That said, what I was writing about was judicial overreach.
The danger with judicial overreach is that it is extreme power without check.
That needs to change, even if I am not uncomfortable with the PARTICULAR result.