Actually, Jonah, I think I am against the death penalty on principle: the principle that justice is better served by allowing murderers to remain alive in prison until their natural deaths, rather than risk putting an innocent man to death. What’s not principled about that? I admit I cannot make my mind up on whether the death penalty is essentially immoral. I’m inclined to think it’s not, though again, my judgment is contingent on societal conditions. A place like (say) Colombia, which suffers from poverty and corruption, is far less able than America to guarantee that a convicted killer will be locked away for life. The death penalty is therefore, in my view, more justifiable there than here. Anyway, the main reason I didn’t suggest ways to “mend it, don’t end it” is because K-Lo gave you and me a limit of 500 words in which to make our case. For the record, I’m all in favor of raising the evidentiary bar in capital cases, for the same reason that I favor laws restricting abortion, even as I wish to see abortion outlawed. Why make the perfect the enemy of the good? But your military analogy doesn’t work, I think, because there is no reasonable alternative to having a military, so we have to live with the possibility of friendly-fire deaths. There is a reasonable alternative to capital punishment.