An opinion piece for the UK newspaper The Times condemns the use of the death penalty. Warning: precariously heightened sense of personal virtue ahead.

A botched execution in Ohio should quicken the end of capital punishment.

"Oh no, an idea we don't like for completely insensible moral reasons has shown it doesn't always work perfectly in reality, even though it never claimed to! I have an idea, let's use this as a strawman against the gun-toting Nazis who support capital punishment!"

When the headline says "botched execution" one imagines a grisly, drawn out and painful sort of execution along the lines of the dry-sponge electric chair at the end of The Green Mile. In reality, all that happened in this case is that after two hours they couldn't find a vein strong enough for the lethal injection, so they sent the convicted murderer-rapist away for another week. If no execution took place, how could it be botched?

Their feeble arguments are put forward in the first paragraph.

America is the only big democracy — apart, occasionally, from Japan — that still carries out capital punishment.

America is X, and is also Y. Unfortunately, X + Y does not = Z, where Z is any kind of logical judgement against the use of capital punishment.

The botched attempted execution in Ohio this week of a murderer should prompt America to join the rest of the developed world in consigning judicial killing to history.

Whoops, I've already done this one. Terrible blogging.

There is inadequate evidence that it acts as a deterrent,

Like prison. But use your brain, what one unavoidable aspect of reality has scared the hell out of mankind since time immemorial? That's right, our deaths. Europe's first piece of literature, The Iliad, dealt with overcoming it. Countless other works of art - that form which expresses our human essence - rely on our innate repulsion towards dying. How could death be any less of a deterrent than prison? But the main strength of capital punishment is not its deterrence but rather its protection, by ridding communities of those dangerous and parasitic individuals who threaten any dignified existence.

it ignores the risk of miscarriages of justice

That's a criticism of any failure within the justice system, not the value of the death penalty. Nevertheless, what's to stop us using the death penalty only in cases where there exists undeniable evidence of guilt?

and allows no room for repentance or correction.

Who cares?

But above all it is a barbarity that stains civilised society.

In your timid and haphazardly formulated opinion.

Well that's The Times' main arguments, let's turn to the comments for further hilarity:

PSF London wrote:
Killing a murderer is eye-for-an-eye justice. Surely then it could apply to other crimes such as rape.

Who would be appointed to rape the rapist? Would you care to nominate someone?

Why should we listen to the morals of a person who picks a completely illogical non-sequitur out of the thinnest of ethers, to use as an argument against something completely unrelated? Who ever stated that capital punishment is only ever justified due to its "eye-for-an-eye" style? No, it's justified for other reasons, including the ones I have mentioned above. All you've done is to pick out one characteristic that no-one was talking about, and extrapolate that characteristic into a scenario that no-one is talking about.

In fact PSF's comment is so hilarious, I will reproduce the rest of it here. LOL's are in bold:

Why is murder the only crime - that I can think of - which so many claim deserves this biblical form of justice? Is it because they find it easy to wash their hands of a killing which is carried out so clinically by the flick of a switch or a nice and hygienically delivered poison? Surely we could have a clinical way of raping someone in the name of justice?

You always get people on these forums saying "I would gladly pull the trigger". I wonder if they would gladly do the raping in this form of retributive justice.

It is nonsense to say that state sanctioned murder is legitimate. It is barbaric and lazy. We are better than the killers and that means we have to stand firm and live with the consequences of being ethically superior.

"The consequences of being ethically superior" - genius. I guess those consequences are having to put up with more murderers, rapists, paedophiles and sadists than everyone else.

There are about a thousand other arguments put forward in the comment section, but they are mainly about claiming the moral high ground so our egos can inhabit a fake sense of justification, so I won't bother with them.

Anyone with a brain-cell and some testicles can rightfully see that capital punishment is not only justified, but also totally awesome!