This guy was sincere? He seemed to be. He needed therapy. I don't think he deserved to be tortured to death.
Then again, I don't want the government killing anyone. I'd rather pay higher taxes and know that we're not executing innocent people, that if someone turns out to be innocent later on through some new kind of evidence, we can still say "Oops" to that person and let them out of jail.
But supposing that execution had been appropriate, I don't think he'd deserve something that harsh. I think VX would have been a fast and surprising way of turning him off. He surprised the people he thought he was supposed to be killing; he didn't fillet them or let them spend hours or years dreading it. Having said that, I think lethal injection (if done properly, and there is considerable doubt about how often it's done properly) is minimally traumatic. The problem there is that in about half the cases reviewed, a medical team found that there was a good chance the prisoners were conscious but paralyzed, and suffered terribly without being able to show it. I guess we disagree on whether that's a good thing.
I might be more in support of the death penalty in a case where someone has admitted they did it, seems totally sane, and seems happy that they did kill the other person/people. (Like, say, the DC sniper team.) But even so, I really don't want the government to have the power to kill people unless there's no other way to end their killing. Once you've got someone in custody, there's no longer a danger there.
Oy, I'm babbling, I'm gonna be late for work unless I shut up now.
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