From a reader:

There are obvious differences between personal property and person (life), as defined in the jurisprudence of the 4th and 5th amendments. However, I think an interesting argument would be that the government has already been in the business of redistributing life before. In eliminating slavery, the government effectively took life from its previous legal owner and gave it
to someone with a higher moral claim to it (the former slave himself).
Obviously this was the correct thing to do. However, as morality becomes
more and more defined by what society wants, rather than an absolute moral
code, it seems possible that this same process could be used to redistribute
life based on some future claims of higher moral standing because of greater
benefit to society.