I guess I have mixed views on capital punishment. I can see the one side where there's a sense of justice, especially if the condemned prisoner did something particularly heinous. I recall that Jeffrey Dahmer was given a life sentence because Wisconsin had no death penalty, but when he was killed in prison by another prisoner, I don't recall anyone shedding any tears for him.
On the other hand, I can see where others might believe that it's wrong for the state to kill, no matter what the perpetrator did.
I would say that in the most extreme and heinous cases, the death penalty might be warranted. But there would have to be absolute certainty of guilt. The justice system has been known to make mistakes.
I would also wonder about the methods of execution. Granted, we don't burn people at the stake anymore, nor do we lower them into boiling oil or put them in the iron maiden. Compared to that, the guillotine would have been considered more humane. We still seemed to prefer hanging though through much of our history, at least until the electric chair came on the scene. Now we use lethal injections for executions, but even that seems to have complications.