I can see I need to work on my comedian ability.
Even still, my point stands. We execute people to show that murder is wrong, not that killing is wrong.
Ah, well a regular dose of emoticons can work wonders
That said, I don't think it is unfair to call a wrongful execution 'murder'. Since wrongful executions do happen, what to do with the jurors, DA, and the executioners? that would make them guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, and murder. Especially the people involved in performing the actual execution are guilty of committing murder because the state said it's ok.
Capital punishment should be mandatory in those cases. Not doing that is the same as saying that the difference between killing and murder is an arbitrary decision on the part of the state, and that as long as the state says it's ok, killing is not murder.
And since 'the state' in this case boils down to a dozen (ish) people who need to agree, you basically have a system in which a handful of people can legally decide that killing someone is not murder, even if, in hindsight, they made the wrong decision. In other words, murder is only wrong if someone else is doing it. If the state does it, it's not murder, even if the same actions (conspiracy to commit murder because they
think they have a good reason) would put anyone else in the seat of the defendant.
It's the wrongful convictions that make me stand against the death penalty. If you could come up with a guaranteed, incorruptible way of ascertaining guilt, then I could perhaps change my mind. But since that is not going to happen any time soon, I am not going to be blase about throwing away innocent lives just to make sure that the really bad ones get to see their maker rather sooner than expected. Let God sort them out; not us.