I hesitate to post something like this because it raises very repulsive considerations.
So:
TRIGGER WARNING the following contains discussion of rape and sexual assault:
We generally validate the death penalty by simple eye-for-an-eye logic and, for what it's worth, I don't necessarily disagree.
On a rudimentary level, it bears to reason that the penalty for taking a life should be to have yours taken in turn. Basic justice for your crimes. Sure. And if I thought things were that straightforward with no additional considerations, I might be on-board with state-sponsored executions.
But tell me this:
If it bears to reason that we kill someone for killing someone, then, would logic and justice not also demand that we rape someone for raping someone?
Though it follows the same line of reasoning, I'll bet you've never legitimately heard anyone argue that rapists should be subjugated to rape at taxpayer expense.
Why?
Because, obviously, it raises the question "who's going to rape the rapist?"
Would that person then also be a rapist? Would we treat the punisher the same way we treat executioners, that is, we allow that what they're doing is just part of their job, they don't enjoy it, and if anything we treat them sympathetically?
Before someone accuses me of false equivalency, I get that the two are not the same. Hiring someone to administer an arsenic shot is hardly the same as hiring someone to implement sexual assault.
But it's still effectively the same thing.
And that's why I oppose the death penalty.
Not because it isn't a just penalty, per se. Instead, it's a matter of implementation. In the process of carrying out an execution, the state is putting someone in position to kill a killer. Which is at base the same as hiring a person to rape a rapist.
It doesn't matter if our methods of execution seem tame by comparison. "We're killing people humanely" is an irresponsible interpretation of the fact that people are being actively slaughtered to meet our standards of justice and, like it or not, someone is doing the slaughtering.
In conclusion:
It's immediately obvious why rape isn't a viable punishment for rape. Cause it necessarily turns someone else into a rapist.
It should be equally obvious, then, why killing isn't a viable punishment for killing.
And for those of you who suggest execution is more justifiable because our methods appear to be "humane," do you REALLY believe that? Do you honestly believe execution by lethal injection is so much more civilized than beheadings or electrocution or the gas chamber or a firing squad? You're killing someone. The fact that we do it as painlessly as possible means less than nothing. If anything, such "humane" methods are just another way we normalize and trivialize something that should be taken very seriously.