[Ramon de Ramon y Ramon]

With all due respect, Cerek, but did you have dust on your logic chip when you posted see above?

The example of the Ted Bundy case, as you presented it, does certainly nothing to prove the necessity of the death penalty and that assessment is completely unrelated to one's personal stance on the issue: the problem very obviously was that it could not be proven that he was guilty in the earlier murder cases in which he was already a suspect at the time he was tried and convicted for the minor crime. If he had also been convicted for the murder(s) at the same time, both a subsequent death penatly or a (life-)long imprisonment would have prevented him from committing any of the later murders.

I am frankly tired of people trying to convince each other of any "objective truth" in this matter. It is clearly one that hinges entirely on a moral judgement, which in turn is based on cultural/religious and political beliefs: what is your idea of the role of the state, what is the predominant function of sentences (serving justice by exerting revenge or protecting the population from criminal offenders) and so forth ...