"Horrendous brutality"

The State of Arizona took nearly two hours to kill convicted murderer Joseph Wood by a combination of drugs that were never intended as agents for human extermination.  The "botched" execution, if that's how it can be described, most probably marks but one more step along the path to eventual abolition of the death penalty.

Alex Kozinski, the conservative chief judge of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in a well-publicized dissenting opinion to an order denying a procedural motion, ignored the specific legal issue before the court and delivered a philosophical dissertation on the nature of the death penalty itself:

Using drugs meant for individuals with medical needs to carry out executions is a misguided effort to mask the brutality of executions by making them look serene and peaceful—like something any one of us might experience in our final moments.  [citations omitted]  But executions are, in fact, nothing like that.
They are brutal, savage events, and nothing the state tries to do can mask that reality.  Nor should it.  If we as a society want to carry out executions, we should be willing to face the fact that the state is committing a horrendous brutality on our behalf.
If some states and the federal government wish to continue carrying out the death penalty, they must turn away from this misguided path and return to more primitive—and foolproof—methods of execution.  The guillotine is probably best but seems inconsistent with our national ethos.  And the electric chair, hanging and the gas chamber are each subject to occasional mishaps.  The firing squad strikes me as the most promising.  Eight or ten large-caliber rifle bullets fired at close range can inflict massive damage, causing instant death every time.  There are plenty of people employed by the state who can pull the trigger and have the training to aim true.  The weapons and ammunition are bought by the state in massive quantities for law enforcement purposes, so it would be impossible to interdict the supply.  And nobody can argue that the weapons are put to a purpose for which they were not intended: firearms have no purpose other than destroying their targets.  Sure, firing squads can be messy, but if we are willing to carry out executions, we should not shield ourselves from the reality that we are shedding human blood.  If we, as a society, cannot stomach the splatter from an execution carried out by firing squad, then we shouldn’t be carrying out executions at all.

Judge Kozinski states eloquently the mental processes of those supporting the death penalty. 

The traditional reasons given for criminal punishment, including the death penalty, are:
1.  Retribution
2.  Deterrence
3.  Incapacitation
4.  Rehabilitation
Studies have shown that the death penalty doesn't deter.  It obviously can't rehabilitate.  It certainly does incapacitate, but so does life imprisonment without possibility of parole.  This leaves retribution as the sole objective.

Judge Kozinski may (or may not) be hoping that his vivid description of legal killings -- "the splatter from an execution carried out by firing squad" -- will crystalize in the public mind exactly what executions do, and thus lead to public revulsion.

Maybe.  But every time someone is arrested for murder, or even for much lesser offenses, I see an outpouring of on-line sentiment for punishments far more exciting and gruesome than death by firing squad.  "Death is too good for him/her," is the predominant theme.  If the accused is a young male, one commentator after another rejoices over the possibility that the accused will be subjected to repeated rapes once he's inside prison walls.  For sexual offenses, castrations in novel and blood-curdling fashions are strenuously and lovingly recommended.

Punishment by the state was originally designed as a substitute for private "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" reprisals by the victim's family. These reprisals often led to lengthy blood feuds that interfered with the king's desire for a stable civil society.  The only legitimate justification for preserving the death penalty, in my mind, would be an analogous attempt to satisfy the overwhelming desire for revenge represented by these disembodied internet voices, voices that howl for ever more blood and pain and long, lingering deaths.

But I suspect that these internet voices represent a small but noisy subset of the entire population.  I hope so.  I would be nervous if I felt I were rubbing shoulders daily with the shuffling zombies from which these voices seem to emanate.

The death penalty serves no legitimate purpose in a civilized society.  Few countries that we consider "developed" still feel a need for capital punishment.  Even in America, it is only in certain states -- states whose identity you can predict without much thought -- that the death penalty remains popular and frequently used.  We don't need to submit to the peculiar -- in every sense of the word -- tastes of those elements of society.