... the "deterrent effect of the shadow of the gallows"...

... should be reconsidered, bringing back the death penalty for those who kill police officers should be considered, thus spoke Conservative peer Lord Tebbit.

Would ordinary people be comfortable participating in such an extraordinary, normally prohibited act, by sitting as a juror where the outcome for a guilty verdict will be judicial murder. For most people most of the time, killing another person is beyond contemplation — and yet capital punishment asks people to do just that.

... but it's not the juror its the law, and it's not the judge, the law requires etc..............

Professor Johnson of the University of Hawaii thinks otherwise ...

... consideration:

After two men were hanged on Aug. 3, Minister of Justice Makoto Taki claimed that he has a duty to authorize executions. "As minister of justice", he explained, "I must carry out my role to respect courts and court decisions."

The two people executed had been found guilty at trials:
03 Aug 2012
Junya Hattori, 40, was executed in Tokyo. Kyozo Matsumura, 31 in Osaka.  They were the first killings under the administration of new Justice Minister Mokoto Taki, the fifth during Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda`s time in office.
Hattori was convicted of attacking and raping a 19-year-old student who was cycling home from college in January 2002. He set her on fire while she was still conscious, killing her. Hattori was on parole after being sentenced for a violent robbery.
Matsumura killed his 57-year-old aunt and his 72-year-old grand uncle in separate attacks in January 2007 and stole their money.  

The issue is "duty", the Minister of Justice calls on the concept of duty much as a pedestrian calls for an umbrella in the rain, as a protection from his or her conscience, duty for the Minister of Justice allowed him to direct the murder of two men without referring to any form of ethics or morality.

Professor Johnson references French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre who regarded duty-based views as "bad faith," which he defined as "pretending that something is necessary when in fact it is voluntary."

.................... 

People who say they "have no choice" are often engaged in bad faith, and most acts of bad faith are mundane. Every day we say "I had to do it" — laugh at the boss' bad joke, or nod at a teacher's unpersuasive explanation — and what we imply is that we have placed higher priority on the expectations of a role than on our own freedom to choose how to act.

... it was at the point of reading Professor Johnson where he writes of "... nod at a teacher's unpersuasive explanation" that I understood the very persuasive arguments that  Jean-Paul Sartre had made.

If I am not prepared to commit the crime of murder, then I should not be prepared to participate in a trial where a guilty verdict would make me complicit in the judicial murder of another person, no-matter how heinous the crime.

Is this the argument that commits humanity to abolish all forms of judicial murder ..........

So Lord Tebbit, I'm afraid your call to arms in support of Capital Punishment is unsupportable .........

......... if I am obliged not to laugh at the bad jokes at work, I am also obliged to confront people such as yourself who would incite me to murder .........