The death penalty is only a deterrent for people who are rational and have a sense of their own mortality. I think that it is time to explore new ways of punishing people in our society. It is also time to stop punishing people who do no harm to others, but only (debatably) to themselves.
Gangbangers should be forced to dig graves--they wouldn't get a good shovel, either, they'd have to use a little garden shovel. (Obviously they couldn't be sent out to dig actual graves for people; the grave-diggers union would have a fit). When they were done they would have to lay in the grave for 8 hours or so. They wouldn't be allowed to get out of the hole for any reason. After the time was up, they would have to fill in the hole. People who, in the past, would have been eligible for the death penalty could be dealt with in other ways: They could be airlifted to the south pole and dropped there. If they find a way to survive, good for them. If they freeze to death in 24 hours, well, tough shit. If you're blood runs cold enough to kill in the first place, then a deep freeze shouldn't be such a bother. Oh, I suppose this is still a death sentence, and maybe it's cruel and unusual punishment. But people who are murdered don't generally ask to be killed, do they? An alternative to the death sentence might be something that sounds even more bizarre--ship the murderers up to the moon. Use them as labor to build a moon colony. Hey, it worked for Australia, right? See, just take the prositutes and people who got caught with a bit of pot out of the jails, and send a few of the losers up to the moon, and pretty soon we'll be able to stop building new jails every week.
Right. I'm not usually so political. It's just a hot topic lately, it seems.