If someone deserves to die, should we kill them?

That's what I asked myself recently, as I read the news that the jurors recommended life in prison instead of the death penalty for Nikolas Cruz, the Parkland school killer.

His crimes were unquestionably heinous. He murdered more than a dozen children and teachers and permanently traumatized many others, and he did it in a place that should have been a sanctuary. He was ruthless and premeditated. The suffering he caused is incalculable.

And yet, I find myself agreeing with the jurors.

My opinion may be worse than worthless in this situation, but I can't help but having it. I can't help thinking it: Death should not be compounded by death.

The Ancient Greeks had a term for what happens when you kill someone: miasma. Blood guilt.

They believed miasma infected a killer but also the society in which he lived, and permeated everything and everyone around him. Miasma led to further wrongs and created further suffering — even in innocents. Victims had to avenge it, but their revenge, in turn, just created more miasma.

The belief in miasma was one of the reasons the death penalty was so rarely enforced in Classical Athens. Often, murderers were allowed to escape, and when they were executed, it was typically in secondhand ways that allowed the executioners to escape full responsibility.

No one killed Socrates, in other words. Socrates killed himself by drinking the hemlock.

And though it's silly to think blood guilt had technicality loopholes, the Ancient Greeks felt they had to do something. They didn't want the blood on their hands, either.

For when we kill someone, it taints us.

It wasn't just the Ancient Greeks who believed that.

It's the reason why, during executions by firing squad, sometimes one or more of the gunmen are given blank or dummy rounds, protecting them from the miasma, from the stain of blood.

But what about the incurably evil? Perhaps killing them is different.

The other day, my son asked me if I hated one of his classmates, a "big meanie" who made a little girl cry.

"No, I feel sorry for him," I said. "Because when you hurt someone, you get a yucky feeling inside."

"But what if he likes the yucky feeling?" my son asked.

It's a good question. Because some do. They like the yucky feeling and are irretrievably drawn to it, will seek it out — over and over — until and unless they are stopped. And we must stop them.

But people who like the yucky feeling — whether they're evil or simply broken — are alive, and the law should protect their lives, the same as it does yours and mine.

Justice cannot, should not, be about parsing who deserves death. You can't be allowed to murder a deadbeat dad any more than you can be allowed to murder a single mother.

The immorality of the crime is not dependent on the morality of the victim.

That's why it's reprehensible when victims are attacked for not being innocent enough, as if shortcomings or sins make them acceptable targets for crime.

Under the law, everyone's life should be valuable, inherently, for no other reason than that we only have one.

In saving his life, Cruz's defense team seems to have successfully pulled jurors' heartstrings. One fetal alcohol expert testified that, while pregnant with him, Cruz's mother drank more than any other woman he'd heard of in decades of studying the topic.

To me, that's unfortunate but irrelevant to his punishment.

For in determining whether to take his life, we must consider the consequences - but not to him. We must consider the consequences to us.

Though he may deserve to die, we first should ask a more important question:

Do we deserve to be killers?

To learn more about Georgia Garvey, visit GeorgiaGarvey.com.

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