text: is it ever jusifiable to execute criminals?   believe it or not, there do exist people who are a danger to society, who cannot be reformed, and are a threat to everyone that comes in contact with them for as long as they continue living. there are also people for whom a lifetime of imprisonment is much more cruel than simply killing them.  i have known people of both stripes. and you have undoubtedly heard of some of them too. prisoners who beg not to be released because they know that they will commit crimes again and don't even want to. suspects who commit 'death by cop' rather than be taken to jail.  i not only think it is not wrong to kill these people, i think it may be wrong not to kill them. society benefits in the former case, and the individual wishes it in the second.  of course, i'll be the first to grant that most of the people killed by the american justice system fail to fall into either category. that is not the fault of the death penalty as a punishment, but of the system that implements it.