I beg to differ, clown. The gallows does well to one person and one person only and that is the gallows maker. I cannot believe that death is the best thing for he that is condemned to it. And most nations around the world agree. Mine is one of the few still in the dark ages in this respect.
The desire to see a criminal hanged is understandable but it does not benefit the criminal in any way – nor does it benefit the society that does it to him. It just codifies and ritualizes murder. I’m not absolutist about a lot of things but I think murder is murder, whether a criminal is doing it or the state. And murder will inevitably stain the hands of whomever commits it – even if you offload the stain to an executioner, the stain spreads to the one who condemned someone to die, the one who failed to defend him from it, those who accused him, the ones who made the laws that condemned him, the witnesses, the ones who enforced the law. Spreading the stain does not make it any less horrible. The stain’s reach is infinite.
The Hamlet Project 