[mitsur]

Alrighty, this should be a fun topic.

The Death Penalty is a big deal for a lot of people. It's the government taking the life of one of it's citizens for a crime that is perceived to be bad enough to justify said taking of life. So of course it will always cause controversy.

But as for me, I beleive the death penalty should, as Nemo said, be used when said person murders more than one person while knowing what they were doing. I understand this is a very general opinion, but I do not wish to get into the technicalities, only to say that while sometimes things do happen like vengeance or passion, you can say that 99% of the time you're not going to kill someone out of emotion twice in your life unless you're already a threat to society. Once you take out that second person, that's when you become a danger to those around you due to your murderous personality. But the first time, that should be when they take a sizeable chunk of your life away for killing someone else, no matter if they deserved it or not. But things do happen, and rage or fear or hate can make you pull that trigger, which dosen't entirely make you accountable for your actions. I mean, you did it, but your feelings played a major role in making you do it.

tl;dr Death Penalty when they plan it out more than once; otherwise jail time.