Morality of the Death Penalty

http://youtu.be/qLglbp4Ht6w

In Law abiding citizen the question of Ethics of the Death penalty is brought up.  Kant says “neither a society, nor a state can exist without laws. If there is no law, there is no society and no state. Therefore enforcement of the law, which is the society's foundation, means protection of the society and the state. Thus, any person violating the law loses the right to be a society member, opposes social order and consequently must be deemed guilty and punished. The right to administer punishment is the right of a ruler to make violators and criminals suffer. It is impossible to punish the ruler himself since the authority to administer punishment belongs to him. A ruler can retire due to his crimes but cannot be punished. “  So this it is a categorical imperative for members of a society to abide by the rules set up otherwise a punishment is necessary.  In the film Law abiding citizen the ethics of how one should be executed is brought up. The chemicals used during lethal injection (barbiturate, paralytic, and potassium solution) are used in order to kill the condemned without pain, or at least visible pain in the case the barbiturates do don’t work the paralytic will hide the suffering if death is not immediate.  The main character in LAC exchanged the canisters in the machine that administered the lethal injection and therefore the lethal injection was no longer a painless procedure.  So is this no longer etchical? The end result is the same they still die regardless of which way is used.  According to Kant “the punishment must always correspond to the crime.”  So he would not have a problem with painful death of the violator as long as the victim had also suffered.