There is more into retribution concept of justice than your travesty of it suggests. First, retribution is not utilitarian, it does not intend to generare social utility by rehabilitating a criminal or by deterring others. It is an act of avenging a wrong because it is a right thing to do - and as such it is a form deontological ethics. In the same vein, one should do certain things not because they are useful, but because they are right and one has the duty to do what is right. As any ethic, you can accept or reject it, but you cannot argue that it is irrational or inferior.
> that allows you to avoid asking harder questions, like why
> some people are more likely to be sentenced to death for
> capital crimes than others, or whether killing is a just
> response to killing, aside from its ability to soothe tempers.
I think I already said it several times during this discussion that this is an altogether different subject - that of application rather than than of principle. One may be a supporter of death penalty in principle but oppose its application under specificl circmustances. I do not think many people on this list would buy the argument that socialism is evil because Stalin used it to harm his enemies - but I see a lot of arguments that death penalty is evil because it is sometimes used in a discriminatory fashion in this country.
BTW, claiming discrimination because most inmates on the death row are minorities is false logic. One needs to show that minorities committing similar crimes have a greater chance of ending on the death row (i.e. showing that, say, fewer white ax murderers ended on the death row than black ax murderers did).
Wojtek