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... "Yet I remember one in the Austin area, Kenneth McDuff, who was sentenced to the death penalty but when the Supreme Court overturned the death penalty was re-sentenced to life in prison. Then he was paroled on good behavior, only to kill again before finally caught."

Be careful using anecdotes to try to clinch the argument: it will bring one into the Willie Hortonistic arguments of the RW. The next argument is : what if it were my child/brother/sister/spouse/parent appeal to the emotional. I am much more likely to be killed by a drunk driver than a stranger. I am more like to be murdered by someone I know than by an ex-con.

The reason you can point to this one case is evidence actually of how exceptional his case was. We cannot build policy on exceptions and outliers.

We don't use the courts to help the dead to get justice. There is no justice for the dead. Their corpses are just evidence of an alleged crime. The process is not about gaining retribution the survivors, it's about keeping values and the integrity society, measuring if there is any change in society's norms and values.

This why families do not get to judge or sentence or prosecute or sit on the juries.