Anders Breivik.

Simply not true that he will be walking free in 9 years time.

> A sentence of permanent detention can be imposed if there is considerable danger of repetition. Permanent detention is not subject to any timeframe. However, the court always fixes a timeframe that may not exceed 21 years. When the timeframe expires the offender may be re-assessed. If the court concludes that there is still a danger of repetition the timeframe may be extended by up to five years at a time. There is no upper limit to the number of times that the court may extend the timeframe.

That's a relief, but the guy should be put to death. It does no one any favors to keep stringing them along on an arbitrary indefinite attention. The victims have to be worried that he'll get let loose and strike again. The perpetrator is meanwhile tortured through indefinite extensions. Rarely, but sometimes the case such as Breivik presents itself for which, death is mercy to all involved.

Why can't we give him life and call that mercy, then?

It's not that hard to take a hard line stance against the death penalty and still say that mass murderers don't get to walk free.

I have no idea why you would think that. The maximum sentence is 21 years, they much is true, but that doesn't mean he will be released. There will be extensive psychological evaluations and the sentence can be extended indefinitely if Breivik is still considered a danger to society.

This seems honestly like something you would read on a far-right conspiracy website about what a liberal hellhole Europe is.

I'll do the psychological evaluation for you, free of charge: he killed 70 people, admitted to it, and admitted to premeditating it. He's a psychopath.

"There was a killer in Norway that murdered something close to 70 people 8 or 9 years ago."

Assuming you're talking about Breivik and the Utøya-massacre, that happened in 2011. And he is unlikely to ever "go free". He was sentenced to "containment" (sikring), which can extended indefinitely (and almost certainly will be).

My argument is that the guy is a psychopath and should be put down. Not that his containment should be up for debate. He killed 70 people. 70.

> the guy will be walking free in another 9 years time.

This is not true. He was sentenced to 21 years in prison, but his prison stay can be extended, indefinitely, as long as he is deemed a danger to society.

I would be extremely surprised if Breivik walks at the end of the 21 years.

The issue isn't about finding if some specific person deserves the death penalty or not. There are people, like Anders Breivik, where their guilt is pretty dang obvious.

But can you come up with some standard of evidence that would be 100% accurate in all cases? Real life tends to get complicated very quickly, and there have been people that have been executed on seemingly clear-cut evidence, only to be exonerated later (Timothy Evans comes to mind). When the cost of failure is so high, it's a safer move to just avoid the risk altogether.

By a strict logical interpretation, execution by death penalty is not murder. Dictionary definition of murder: "the _unlawful_ premeditated killing of one human being by another."

Violation of one's inalienable right to life (as written in the US declaration of independence, as well as the UN's universal declaration of human rights) is unlawful, regardless of any state legislation.

States can't legislate you out of your human rights.

One day the US federal courts will notice this error that they've made and fix the glitch.

As Churchill famously said, "You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else."

Someone who violates an innocent persons inalienable right to life, thereby forfeits their own right to life.

By that clown logic, any hostile forces can freely invade and conquer the United States, because it's universally illegal to kill human beings, including enemies.

No, it's not. Self defense is moral and justified. And some people are more dangerous alive than dead. Worse, some people develop a cult-of-personality and a following that they can even control or influence from jail. You telling me a mafia or gang leader or a former dictator guilty of genocide doesn't deserve the death penalty? Naive, to say the least. You know little of true evil, which does exist and no amount of corrective procedure will fix.

Someone held securely in prison does not pose an imminent threat to you, and thus an argument from self-defense is void.

The fact that you move on so deftly to the word "deserve" suggests that it's vengeance you seek.

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

You are being disingenuous. A murderous psychopath is a danger to people. This is obvious and something that a five year old child can understand. Some people cross the line and forfeit their lives. The death penalty is absolutely justifiable unless you are a moral relativist, which is a logically inconsistent world view.

> Someone held securely in prison

I already mentioned the cult-of-personality example above and you breezed over it. Gang leaders are fully capable of executing kills from jail. They have influence that extends beyond the 4 walls they're contained to. Some of them have access to a vast array of money and dangerous people who they can delegate to. They can also actively influence or harm other prisoners in jail.

Treating true psychopaths with kid gloves won't make the world a better place.

It's not trivial to fix without introducing mechanisms that are worse than death, such as isolated confinement and other forms of torture.

I believe that this is a false dichotomy that you present; I can think of several different solutions to this problem in seconds, none of which are what you describe.

> Self defense is moral and justified.

To the extent that it is moral and justified, it does not extend to include intent to kill. To the extent intent to kill is present, it is not morally “self-defense”, though it may still be within the scope that law does not punish when the other moral elements of self-defense are present (which is, itself, right and proper despite allowing some immoral acts to go unpunished as criminal law should err on the side of nonpunishment and teasing out intent when the other elements of self-defense are present is more likely to result in the reverse error.)