> I'm sure the relatives of people murdered by incompletely developed executive functions understand completely ...

Lex talionis, one of the oldest principals of justice, came about as a limitation on retribution specifically because giving “relatives of people murdered” an excessive role in deciding the application of justice was recognized millennia ago as a fatal mistake for any kind of orderly society.

> Words seem trite in describing what follows when your husband is murdered in your presence, when your father is stripped from your life. The horror, the agony, the emptiness, the despair, the chaos, the confusion, the sense—perhaps temporary but perhaps not—that one’s life no longer has any purpose, the doubt, the hopelessness. There are no words that can possibly describe it, and all it entails. - testimony of J. Michael Luttig (former federal judge whose father was murdered by Napoleon Beazley, who was at the time 17).