For it. I don't care that it's not perfectly administered. I've lost friends and relatives to murder and I wanted their killers dead, period.
Years ago, a young man I had gown up with since elementary school was murdered, along with 3 other young men. I believe the killers (4 of them) got less than $200. The manner in which they murdered my friend and the others was gruesome, to put it mildly. The last thing they did to 3 of them was to slit their throats. They didn't do that to my friend and we all think we know why. Rumors filtered out to the same effect, so maybe it was even true.
He was a good person. In fact, that is what his life was dedicated to. He was majoring in religious studies and planning to become a youth minister. He would have spent his life helping countless young people and adding so much goodness to the world. We believed, and the rumors among those close to the family indicated that he kept praying aloud and the killers could not or would not slit his throat as they had the other victims. So they finished him off some other way.
I can still see him at school, at football games playing in the band, at church, at hayrides and school dances. I can also remember the utter devastation his family suffered and how his poor mother has never been the same, sometimes spending hours on end at his grave. Why do I take this time to write about him?
Because he deserves to be remembered.
I promise you I would have readily pulled the switch on every one of those four murderers. Their four lives added together weren't worth one of my friend. At least one has been executed, maybe two. One was a juvenile and escaped the death penalty. I have lost track of the fourth.
Don't bother with the "If your friend was such a good Christian, he would have forgiven them" stuff. Yes, we forgive. But you still have to face your punishment. And around here, that's the death penalty. It took too long for it to be carried out, however.