The Rebel Faction

Is killing one innocent man the equal of killing a thousand guilty ones?

Is killing one innocent man the equal of letting a thousand guilty ones go free.

It is a common tactic of death penalty lovers everywhere to equate not killing someone to not holding anyone accountable. This is because they can only rationalize justice through murder. In doing so they also ask a lot of irrelevant questions, like this one.
The question is, do you want your state to be protector or aggressor? Defender of the victims or victimizer? Do you want the law to be an instrument of public defense or a method by which the streets may be filled with the blood of those you perceive guilty to sate your infantile lust for righteous violence?

The death penalty has never been about punishing the guilty or helping the innocent, because it will sometimes miss the guilty and sometimes punish the innocent. It is about making a few (or many, it doesn't really matter) people feel better by assigning blame and carrying that blame to an extreme, without any real particular regard for the justice of doing so.

I would except this is the internet. On the internet there are people who post pictures of their overstretched anuses with pretty fair frequency so I figure a little verbal belligerence is just par for the course.