I support the death penalty in theory, in exceptional cases where the prisoner would otherwise be kept life long in isolation with no hope for parole like if they carried out massive terrorist attacks killing hundreds of people. However, all of them must be given a fair trial and their sentence should be carried out as soon as possible, cleanly, quickly and quietly so that their suffering isn't dragged on needlessly. However, cases like this make me my position be anti-death penalty. Unless we have a method with a 100% success rate and absolute certainty that he was the perpetrator(i.e. mountains of evidence not even Phoenix Wright can find holes in) , executions should be put on hold. And under no circumstance should it be open for viewers, even if through a window. The only people present should be the condemned, the executioner(s) and security detail posted outside.
I always hear these ridiculous claims as to when to support the death penalty. "only if they killed exactly 14 people on Tuesday in front of a Supreme Court Judge and ate a banana from the bottom end and a court scribe was there documenting the whole thing while Errol Morris filmed it all and the president is on the jury and..." why not just not have the death penalty? It's state-sponsored murder and used purely as a way to get revenge. It breeds the acceptance of revenge, and in heinous crimes, people are always going to want to go for it given the choice, and it's bound to be at some point "well, this is a REALLY bad crime, and there's LOTS of evidence, so let's do it.", and there have been tons of cases where that's thought to have happened and been wrong. And an innocent person died. On top of that, what does it accomplish? Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will get the death penalty, almost certainly. So now we have a dead terrorist and lots of dead and angry people who feel satisfied that someone else is dead. He also potentially becomes a martyr, there's a chance at another terrorist, and nothing changes. Meanwhile, in Norway, Anders Breivik sits in prison. He is a man that will most likely never leave prison, however, there is no death penalty. There isn't even a life sentence. There is a maximum number of years that can be given to a person (I believe 17) and then at the end of that term, it is determined if the person has been rehabilitated. If not, they stay in prison until they are. The system is built on rehabilitation, and they have an astoundingly low recidivism rate across the board. Breivik will probably never be fixed, nor will Tsarnaev, but at the very least, if we had Norway's system, people live, and there's a chance at recovery. There's a chance that a serious criminal can understand and become a productive member of society, and people see that the state actually cares about the well-being of its citizens and its goal is good people, instead of punishment and revenge.
That's a rational point of view. I don't agree; I believe roughly that we don't have the moral right to kill fellow humans if we don't think they will cause us or ours harm in the future -- so I'm not a pacifist but I dislike the death penalty.