[devonin]

The stated purpose of torture when people want to justify it is to gain information from someone that they don't want to give up, so you give them the incentive of making the pain stop to encourage them to tell you what they know.

I don't see how that's applicable in this case. You seem to want to use torture simply as a means of punishment. You did something bad, so I'm going to hurt you a bunch. I can't see how that could possible be helpful any more than normal incarceration would be.

I didn't say "Any punishment that doesn't kill them is okay by me" I said "Not killing them is more acceptable than killing them" Cruel and unusual punishment is also not something I'm particularly willing to get behind. The only way I could justify it ever would be in a case where someone provably knew information vital to saving the lives of a large number of innocent people and was refusing to give it up. Even then, I imagine I'd be carrying an awful lot of guilt around afterwards.