[etxel]

Well, first of all I think man (and his/her actions) is a product of things that can be summerized in 1. His/her biology 2. His/her sorroundings 3. (For religious people out there) His/her soul. There is nothing else that I'm aware of that essentially determines whether a man chooses to do one thing vs. the other. Therefore, I don't believe in true free will. I think it is an illusion. For example, if someone chooses to murder someone else, why did he make that choice? Well, maybe he/she is crazy, maybe the person couldn't handle jealousy, anger, stress or whatever and so he proceeded to kill. Whatever the reason may be, it can always be traced to the 1. biological qualities to handle the stresses affecting him/her and 2. the specific stresses affecting him/her. And those 2 factors were imposed on the person, meaning that the person didn't decide his/her biology or his/her sorroundings. Therefore, is essence a person doesn't really decide his/her actions! More specifically every action man takes is a product of how his/her neurons respond to some stimulus (whether it be a stimulus outside of the nervous system or within it).

So, in a perfectly fair system, I think no one would be guilty of anything, since they can blame their decisions on biology and sorroundings which they didn't have control of.

However, having said all that, we've evolved into a society which tries to maintain order in a wold that is naturally chaotic and killing disturbs that order so a punishment is made to try to stop it. Well, to me there's no right answer, it depends on the case, but for the most part death penalty is a little extreme, I don't think anyone should have the power to rationally decide whether a man deserves to die or not. But I think cutting the killer's thumbs off would make it very difficult to shoot a gun or use a knife again, so that might help : ) And maybe the killer will later thank you for helping him control an impulse he had no control over.
I don't know this is all theoretical what ifs, me thinking out loud.

In general I think our society functions the way it is now and if anything I would move towards less capital punishment.