[scarr]

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I say do it like they do in China...take him behind the courthouse, shoot him in the back of the head, and send a bill for the bullet to his family.

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And as Dennis Miller said ... "do it before they finish forming the T sound in 'I did it!'.

No "beyond a reasonable doubt" is needed when there is a confession. Ironically, a confession can carry a lesser sentence, which is B.S. Also, a plea of insanity can get somone off of death row too. You have to be insane to kill someone knowing you could be killed for doing it. And if you have the capabilities to kill someone and your mentally unstable enough to do it, your ability to commit that crime should be taken away. Death may be harsh but effective, physically handicapping a mentally handicapped (insane) person might be more appropriate here.

As for the OP's question: "how many innocent people can be executed to justify the deterance aspect of the death penalty?"

Whether the deterrent aspect works because of the cost of committing the crime, or the fact that a dead person cannot kill, killing another human is not socially acceptable. Sure, we are killing another person when we execute someone, we are also killing someone else when we fight in a war.

If a group of peers decided that the accused was not justified in his actions, he is quilty. It takes a unanimous decision to convict in places where the death penalty is applied. It is a trust in the system, and it is not something you can put a number on. I trust that the system does not have any error. If it does, then it needs to be fixed. It isn't a matter of how much error we can tolerate.