There is a difference between one's personal, emotional desire for revenge and a community's responsibility toward maintaining a civilized and just society.
As a parent, if one of my children were to be a victim of such a horrible crime, I'd want to exact all sorts of brutal vengeance upon the perpetrator. Even as an individual, I feel incredibly strong outrage at the actions of these subhuman monsters.
However, we as a society must always strive to execute those whose crimes justify such penalty in the most painless, efficient means possible. Otherwise, what is supposed to be an expression of justice becomes a spectacle. As a people, we should advance in cultural and social thinking, rather than regress to earlier, more barbaric habits.
To answer an earlier question of how I handle in-game executions in the face of raise dead spells. My campaign has a death-god who must be bargained with (usually through the proxy of the death-god's priests, but if you're high enough level...) which means that if the executed isn't really worth anyone's time to bargain for, or if the death-god thinks the newly dispatched soul makes a good trophy for the infernal mantlepiece, then ressurection becomes a moot issue. However, if the death-god feels the condemned was doing a fine job of advancing Death and Evil in the world... well, that's one of the issues one must deal with living in a world where the death-god is Neutral Evil.
