I don't agree with killing people as a punishment at all- it makes the authoroties who allow it just as bad as the murderer.

I think that a lifetime prison sentance would have been a suitable punishment, and if you look at the amount of people who can't cope with lifetime sentances and who kill themselves (Harold Shipman, for example) you will see that it is not the easy way out. i think it's much more of a punishment to lock people up for the rest of their lives than to kill them- that is the easy way out, they would never have to face up to what they had done, and it is probably much more depressing to be locked up and completely cut of from the world than to be dead and so have no recolection of it.