Reply #16: my question for you is "what do you hope to achieve...?"

[mike_c]

If you desire revenge, then slow killing, with maximum pain, is probably the best solution. If you seek justice, then things get a bit more complex-- what is just, in a situation like the one you described? Is anyone served by further death? Which of their interests are served? Are those interests in the the broader society's interest as well?

If you seek punishment, but for justice's sake rather than simple, brutal vengeance, then I think rotting in prison, under awful conditions, fits the bill nicely.

If, on the other hand, you seek to make the world a better place, where crimes like this happen less frequently than they do today, neither vengeance nor punishment "justice" have ever proven very effective, have they? They've been used throughout human history to avenge crimes like the ones you described, with little or no success-- how many more millenia should we try them unsuccessfully before we admit that, human nature for revenge aside, they do not actually work?

I seek a better world, so I think we need a better solution. I don't know what the mechanics of that solution involve-- it has not yet been discovered-- but I have a pretty good idea what its endpoint would look like. It would have Booker going free, returning to society to everyone's benefit, and not committing further crimes like this one.

Killing him will never achieve that.