Most people do not have very strong views about capital punishment because it is not something that comes close to their lives.

The people that do tend to voice strong preferences for capital punishment are those who have been in a relationship with a victim of murder. The views of these people are usually charged with a great deal of emotion and it is easy to get swept up in their anger and desire for revenge. I suspect it is this emotion, which is often exploited by the media, that informs the opinion of the 51% who agree with capital punishment.

Grief is a very complex emotion and bereaved people often give simplistic reasons about why they feel the way they feel and what kind of action by the judicial system would make them feel better.
When you see their rage or their tears of sadness it is hard to step back and be rational about their situation but that is exactly what we need to do. It is acting according to reason rather than emotion that makes us truly human and we need to maintain those standards when we look at the issue of capital punishment.

csteel

You misunderstand the sixth commandment.

It is 'Do no murder', not 'do not kill', as the commandment was handed down at a time when the Israelites were about to kill their way through the promised land.

Also the same book that interprets the commandments dictates death as the suitable punishment for many sins / crimes.

Having said that I will not use the Old Testament to justify the death penalty, as I don't believe that the death penalty should be used in the modern world at all. My earlier point was that if it is used it should not be sanitised, it should not be made into a medical procedure.

One of the things about the USA is that few criminals ever serve close to their full sentence - like 7 years for murder. The choice in many places is death or 7 years. Australia at least keeps its murderers in prison for a lot longer than that. The average sentence to serve being 19 years, whilst 'rest of life' is not uncommon. That should be enough.

Capital punishment remains in principle morally legitimate within Catholic teaching. The late Pope John Paul II did however say that it was to be restricted and limited.
The Catholic religion does not prohibit capital punishment.

The April 2001 edition of First Things, a monthly religious journal, published an article about capital punishment and the church, which was adapted from a lecture by Cardinal Avery Dulles of Fordham University. Dulles said, "The Catholic magisterium does not, and never has, advocated unqualified abolition of the death penalty. …Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, in his famous speech on the "Consistent Ethic of Life," in 1983, stated his concurrence …that the State has the right to inflict capital punishment.”

Jesuit priest Kenneth Overberg, an Xavier University theology professor, wrote in the American Catholic, "Augustine recognized the death penalty as a means of deterring the wicked and protecting the innocent. …Thomas Aquinas reaffirmed this position….The new Catechism of the Catholic Church reflects this tradition, stating that the death penalty is possible in cases of extreme gravity."

Paragraph 56 of Pope John Paul II’s 1995 Encyclical “ Evangelium Vitae,” states, "…. ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: …when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society.

there is nothing quite as absurd or as disgusting as a purported christian arguing the legitimacy of capital punishment.

It is not "absurd" or "disgusting" for a Catholic to say these things.
When Our Lord Jesus was hanging on the Cross, there were two criminals one each side. One scoffed and was met with silence by Our LOrd. The other says that they ( the two ) are deserving of their punsihment whereas Jesus isn't. Jesus responds to the good theief Dismas as follows: " today you will be with me in Paradise".

Earlier in Jesus' life he says tha those who destroy the Faith of children 'these little ones' that " it were better for them to have millstones placed aroudn them and they be thrown into the sea" ( which is not literal but Hebrew idiom and hyberbole to demonstrate that crimes of taking away the Faith in God in children is one of the worst things ( which is what secularists do to Catholic kids these days).
http://www.geocities.com/cath_apolo/death.htm

I thought we got rid of the death penalty as it was not ok for one innocent to die with nine that are guilty .Oh but i forgot that it's ok in Iraq and Afganistan these days. SO what happened to life with hard labor or did that stop when everyone said we all have rights ,even killers of many ,to have a tv,air-con and for all the victims of our world to pay for it.Old saying that will always be true FREEDOM IS NOT FREE .