Debating the death penalty on The Colbert Report

There was another amusing interview on The Colbert Report last night, this time about an awfully serious subject: the death penalty.

Exonerated ex-prisoner Kirk Bloodsworth, Advocacy Director of Witness to Innocence, was on the satirical news show to talk about his efforts to abolish the death penalty across the United States. Near the end of the interview Stephen Colbert referenced America as a Christian nation, which led to another one of his loopy yet incisive religious observations (see the 3:55 mark in the video below).

One thing that came out of the conversation was an understanding that unless an American has actively opposed the death penalty, he or she is complicit in the state-sanctioned killing of not only the guilty, but also of those, like Bloodsworth, who were in fact innocent.

Gail Rice, whose brother was murdered during a botched burglary and who has spent much of her life working in Christian prison ministries, previously wrote about her opposition to the death penalty for Think Christian, both to share her own story and to commend the state of Illinois for repealing the penalty in 2011.

As a Christian, how do you view the death penalty? Does the case Bloodsworth makes in the video challenge or support that perspective?