The point of justice is not so that the people can have the pleasure of seeing the f*ckers burn. Its purpose is to ensure a peaceable society, as part of a mechanism that wards against excesses by individuals and the collective alike. Perhaps eye-for-an-eye works perfectly well towards the first goal, but it has disastrous consequences for the second. Justice in general is inevitably flawed. There are wrongful convictions, and perhaps more importantly, emotion and bias on the part of judge and jury often act unfairly against the accused. To protect against what is at its worst totalitarianism or vigilante justice, depending on the details of the system, sentences must be regulated and standardized, and they must allow room for error; hence, the death penalty is under question, and prison terms in livable conditions are the standard punishment. Retributive justice is far too permanent, allowing no possibility of overturning the sentence in light of new evidence or in the case of an unfair ruling, and it makes no allowances for extenuating conditions. Those factors do not apply in this case, but nonetheless; for justice to be just, there can be no exceptions made in order to appease the outrage of the public.