Thanks for sharing this experience with us, NN. And above all, thanks for doing what you're doing. I have great admiration for people like you who accept to live day after day the weight of such a sisyphian task. You're helping to make the world more livable. You reminded me of what Italo Calvino wrote in "Le citta invisibili":

"The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognise who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space."

I voted "a shame on the national conscience", but "all of the above" would have better expressed my opinion. Death penalty is based on the foolish notion that there can be cloture and that there should be retribution. It is a damned tragedy not only for the man who is put to death, bur also for all those who are involved, including his victim's family and friends, because it brings out the worse in them.

I would add it is a political tool, not only as circus for the masses, but also a way to maintain a culture of violence and retribution.    

"Dieu se rit des hommes qui se plaignent des conséquences alors qu'ils en chérissent les causes" Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet