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It’s the principle of exact retaliation, not three eyes for an eye.
Think of the justice system’s goal as keeping vengeance contained. Let’s say three men kill another. Their family, their clan, reckon they should walk, because the murdered man, was of an unpleasant sort. If you have them all executed to satisfy the murdered man’s family, and they take revenge in the same disproportionate manner by killing nine relatives, it results in total war and the wipeout of one of the clans. Whereas if you just execute one, they can let it go under the win some, lose some principle. Or if they still retaliate, at least it’s a slow-burning vendetta, not a massacre.
What’s the limit then, a hundred? What if a political party manages to convince a judge that a hundred political rivals conspired to kill one of theirs, so they’re all executed? Disproportionate retaliation encourages the manipulation of state power via the justice system as a weapon against rivals.
If in the course of our crusade against murder, we end up killing more people than actual murderers kill, I’d take it as an ‘are we the baddies?’ moment. There should never be a doubt as to whose hands are cleaner. Through our displays of superior mercy, even the condemned's supporters have to recognize our verdicts as unimpeachable.
It’s actually closer to four and not two. There’s the originator of the contract (the spouse), which in similar cases, often gets a heavier sentence than the killer. But he had the good taste to kill himself. And there’s the other guy who transmitted the order to the actual killer, who got life in prison. They did not “beat and stab a woman to death with their own hands“ , but this version of justice would still see them all terminated. So no physical touch required, a simple 'send to all' email and you can have as many opponents as you like executed.
You said it was basically impossible to get 100 people executed for one murder because of physical limitations of murder, but you aren't limiting the death penalty to those who commit the physical act, so really all you need to do to get to a hundred is add more links in the chain of transmission of the order, like an email chain.
I consider death and life in prison to be equivalent for the purposes of this discussion: So four condamnations to life in prison is a disproportionate punishment for a single victim’s death. The cure is worse than the disease.
By what limiting principle can your and alabama's bloodlust be satiated, if not proportionality? Why not kill people for littering, or draw and quarter them for rudeness?
What about genocide, when a nation comes together to kill a few neighbours? Shouldn't most of the perpetrator group be executed, for being middlemen, part of the cultural substate of genocide, links in the mass murder chain?
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