I'm kind of against the idea of death penalty carried out by the sate Imagine the guy that turned 18 learns later that he executed an innocent... The mother, relatives... Their pain, what you did to them... While with self defense (as in stand your ground), the risk of exterminating an innocent is much lower, given that you got assaulted to begin with or were on the verge of being assaulted, or defended someone, etc And given of course that you didn't miss and some innocent peope got killed as a result Nothing's perfect, there are always flaws, but at least it's not the killing of some guy you don't know that did something you don't know (because eh, you weren't there after all and maybe you understand why he did it and don't feel like killing him for that) With self defense, you know, he knows, he played he lost