The Death Penalty and Retribution, cont'd.

I would be interested in knowing the reactions of Rick, Michael, Patrick, and others to a few propositions concerning the death penalty:

1.  Human life is a preeminent value, even when the life is not innocent (and no matter how un-innocent the life is).  Therefore no one (including the state) should take human life for the purpose of ending the life.  (The only justifications for killing are self-defense, defense of others, and analogous situations such as defensive war, where the intent is defense not killing.)

2.  No life of any human person may reduced in its value to any act that the person has committed (however heinous).  No act can exhaust the value of the actor's life.  The death penalty logically reduces the value of the offender's life to one act he has committed.

3.  Any capital punishment statute that makes the imposition of the penalty turn (in whole or in part) on the unlikelihood of the offender's rehabilitation -- as I believe every or almost every such statute in America does (correct me if I'm wrong) -- contravenes Christian notions of the possibility of redemption.

Do any of these propositions go wrong, and if so how?  (I should say that I think all of them have power, although in ascending order -- although I agree with #1, I can see answers to it; #3 seems to me unanswerable; and I'd be interested in people's thoughts about #2.)

Tom

CLARIFICATION:  There are probably statutory schemes, and there are certainly individual instances of capital punishment, in which imposition of the penalty does not turn on the question about likely rehabiliation in #3 above.  But if the question about rehabilitation is submitted to the jury, proposition #3 would be that such submission as a basis for considering capital punishment is irreconilable with fundamentals of Christian teaching.  That's the proposition I see as unanswerable.