There are some people who, it seems, have such brutalised psyches that
life, death, mangling other people, is almost irrelevant. It seems that
possibly the death penalty is all that begins to make sense to them in terms
of restraining their behaviour.

However, I fear the baying mob even more than such a person. The
non-responsible baying blood lust that slices through the collective psyche as
it smashes its way through those it has convinced itself that it is free to
hate, and maim, and use for its own release.

There are no easy answers to the human condition but I think Shakespeare
wrote an aspect of it quite well:

The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain
from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him
that gives and him that takes:
‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it
becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the
force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth
sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred
sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God
himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy
seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider
this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation:
we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to
render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the
justice of thy plea;
Which if thou follow, this strict court of
Venice
Must needs give sentence ‘gainst the merchant there.

Hanging should be reserved for politicians who have publicly and massively
failed in their duty to the inhabitants of these islands. Half a dozen
candidates (Brown, Blair,some expenses scamsters) who have lied, cheated,
failed to honour “cast-iron” promises, would concentrate the minds of
surviving politicians wonderfully.