I remember last year a local talk show host proposed torturing a gang of youths who were accused of killing a local man and hiding his body. Supposedly the torture would have forced the kids to reveal where the body was.

I can understand why people in the year 2001 might propose this sort of thing. People do bad things, and we feel powerless. But criminal justice has a long, long history, and there are some very good reasons why we don't torture people, and why we have search warrants, rules of evidence, and an impartial judiciary.

When you give power to the state, especially the power to kill, there is always the risk that that power will be abused. If we imprison a man for a crime he didn't commit, when he is exonerated he can be released and an effort can be made to compensate him. When a man is executed for a crime he didn't commit, there is no compensation possible, and the state has committed a crime for which it cannot be punished.

In Canada, there have been several well-known cases of individuals convicted of murder who were subsequently found to be innocent, sometimes ten and twenty years after the fact. DNA testing is showing that numerous people in the United States who have been convicted of various crimes, including murder and rape, are innocent; the Criminal Justice section of Yahoo! Daily News is filled with stories of people wrongfully convicted.

I can't shed any tears for McVeigh. He did a horrible, horrible thing. But just because I have no sympathy for him doesn't mean that he has no rights as a human being, or that the state has a right to kill him, or anyone else.

When the state sanctions violence, even an execution, it creates a more violent society. Revenge and hatred become acceptable; we can embrace them, revel in them. As has been amply demonstrated by some of the comments in this thread, revenge becomes part of the social fabric of the country. Don't think for one moment that this isn't reflected in American politics, foreign policy, and history.