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I am very much pro death penalty. I can never understand how society can send a message out there that no matter what kind of crimes you commit you will never pay for them with your life.
Because there is always a chance for error in a crime sentence. A jail sentence can always be removed if for some reason something comes up but a death sentence can't because the person is already dead. In any case, technically speaking, you don't own someone's life. Taking a criminal's life is in no way less wrong than murdering some kids' mother.

Off topic, as an engineer myself, I think it is a disgrace that someone would kill another person just out of an argument about kids.

I don't know about that, the sordid details of their personal lives sets up for me a situation where murder may have flowed almost naturally out of the situation. The battle between them was nasty and continual.

I married a woman who had kids from a previous marriage, and at the worst point of the dispute, which involved almost daily harrassment by the Ex, I found myself wishing he would do SOMETHING that would force me to kill him. It would be self defense, of course, but even if it wasn't I would spend a few years in prison, and when I got out my family could live in peace. When I realized the significance of what I was fantasizing about it scared the crap out of me. I moved my family to Alaska without telling anyone and in defiance of a court order. Despite the legal fallout of defying the Judge, I know I made the right choice...

If Hans Reiser, in a much worse situation than mine, made the other choice, I'd understand. I'd still send him to prison though.

You're absolutely right. It's a shame that we spend so much feeding and sheltering murderers. One answer would be to kill them, but a simpler and much less brutal one exists: Just let them go. If they kill again and there is a probability that they will keep doing so, then lock them up for that. The overall cost will be so much lower due to the lower volume of incarcerated people that the tax burden will seem light.

Most people who are convicted of murder would never do so a second time and are unlikely to be any kind of harm to society.

Given the flawed nature of the justice system, represented by the number of people later found to be innocent, it is impossible to justify killing. The framers of the US constitution attempted to design a legal system that minimized false positives. It is far better to have a hundred guilty men go free then it is to deny freedom to a single innocent man.

I support the death penalty; it simply must exist. Sometimes killing people is the only thing to do. However, its application is to me only theoretical; I do not think I can imagine many cases in which it would actually be applied.

Killing someone for revenge is morally wrong. You can call it "justice" if you like, but for the families it is largely just revenge. The questions to ask are "What is the advantage to society?" and "What is the harm to society?"

If you allow a murderer to live and go free society is harmed. There is a potential for another murder, which is inherently harmful. Those still alive who feel victimized are harmed psychologically, which harms society.

If you kill the murderer society is harmed for the same reason that society would be harmed if he killed again. The family of the murderer are harmed psychologically, which harms society.

I see these as almost equal, but since in the case of allowing the murderer to go free you have merely the /potential/ for the harm of killing, that case works out to be less harmful. I know what you're thinking: "What about the harm the murderer already did to society by killing someone?" but this is not important. That harm has been done anyway, the task afterward is to find the best way to minimize the harm to society going forward. Killing the murderer for any other reason than minimizing future societal harm is simply revenge, and thus morally unsupportable.