The Death Penalty - Should it be abolished?

There is not a whole lot of rehabilation going on there.

by the way, Devil's advocate or Advocatus Diaboli is title of high official of Catholic Church (who has duty to find all possible reasons for someone not to be bonificated) so I guess you would rather skip that title ))

Sure, where deterence is effectual, that's got to be part of the equation.

But if you are suggesting that once a punishment is established, then all moral questions become moot, that's a bit easy.

Not too long past, in the streets of London, one could sit down on a high fence and watch folks being pulled apart by four horses. In Taliban controlled states, theft was lawfully punished by whacking off the thiefs hands.

So, whether or not a state sets out a penalty (puts it into the law...eg three strikes, to take a modern example) doesn't entail that all the moral thinking has been done.

Relieved of the burdens of governing Pennsylvania, Philadelphia's Friends redoubled their efforts in building schools and hospitals. Prison "reform" held particular attraction, as they had learned more about prisons than they had ever wanted to know. Over fifteen thousand had been imprisoned in Quakerism's early days in England, and George Fox had spent more than six years in prison.
Working with Benjamin Franklin, with whom they had joined forces to build America's first general hospital in 1756, the Quakers conceived of a totally new type of prison, meant to be an improvement from the holding pens that were typical of the eighteenth century. The first endeavor, which opened in 1790, was called a "penitentiary " house. It featured sixteen cells for solitary confinement. The idea was that, in silence, the prisoners' Inner Light would lead them to a state of penitence.
Out of this humble beginning came a grand experiment, the massive 450-cell Eastern State Penitentiary, the origin of the U.S. penitentiary system and the subsequent model for overseas systems (for the short time it was in vogue). Built from 1821 to 1836, in a hub-and-spokes design, it was the largest and most expensive building of its time, costing the then-exorbitant amount of $789,000.
To maintain the standard of absolute solitude for every prisoner, criminals lived?-paradoxically?-with physical luxuries and social stringencies. Each cell was private and had heat, running water, a flush toilet, a skylight, and its own exercise yard. Meals were delivered to each cell. (The very same year, the White House had a coal-burning stove and no running water.) There was nothing but shoemaking or weaving to fill the prisoners' days: visitors, books or letters, and contact with other prisoners were forbidden. The system was so strict, the institution's history records, that "to prevent distraction, knowledge of the building, and even mild interaction with guards, inmates were hooded whenever they were outside their cells."
It was not long before this "reform" generated calls for its own reform. In his American Notes, Charles Dickens, horrified upon his visit to the world's first penitentiary in 1842, wrote: "Those who designed this system of Prison Discipline ... do not know what it is that they are doing. ... I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body."
Design modifications were made to the building starting in 1870, and the prison's exclusive use of solitary confinement (which came to be known as the Pennsylvania system) was abandoned in 1913. The building continued to be used as a prison, but with inmates sharing cells, eating in a dining hall, and exercising together. In need of expensive repairs, it was closed in 1971. It has been open to tourists since 1994.
--L.S