So someone else should have it on their soul?
They said they wouldn’t argue for the death penalty, so no; it’s on the soul of the people who do support it.
If it’s going to be done anyway, better than it be done by someone who will do it well, and who won’t enjoy it.
Why should the people who oppose it be forced to kill people for the entertainment of those who do support it?
Because that’s what it is; bloodsport. It has no actual function other than entertainment. And I certainly have no desire to kill other people for the entertainment of others.
So you’ve kept your own hands clean and your moral purity preserved, but in the end the condemned person is still dead, except that now they’ve been killed by some gleeful sociopath who’s botched the job. How is that any better?
It’s literally all I can do. In a nation largely composed of awful people, keeping my own hands clean is all I can really do. And hope to die before they get around to me.
If enough people refuse, it won’t be done at all.
And why do you think the gleeful sociopath will botch the job? There’s a high correlation between what people like to do and what they are good at, and i think causation goes both ways. It would be truly horrifying to force some death penalty opponent to serve on a firing squad, only to have him flinch and his shot go somewhere painful-but-not-quickly-lethal.
John C. Woods, US hangman of the Nuremberg Trials condemned. Grossly incompetent, but he wanted the ego-boost, if not also the sadistic thrill, of state-sanctioned killing.