Volokh changes his mind

Thanks to this post by Mark Kleiman, Eugene Volokh has recanted his earlier position regarding the imposition of deliberately painful death sentences for those convicted of monstrous crimes, such as child murder, rape and abuse. Volokh believes " that attempts to impose the punishments would logjam the criminal justice system and the political system."

This, I think, misses the point. Riggsveda says it best:

Would it be too obvious to say that those who indulge their vengeance coarsen themselves and become the very things that they hate? Or that we lose what moral superiority we may like to think we have over murderers and sadists if we do? One thing we would not lose is our humanity, which encompasses the very worst (as well as the best) that any of us is capable of.