State Execution

Right or wrong, fair or foul, just or unjust, for those persons deemed to be unworthy of reeducation the only viable option left to the state other than years worth of fruitless imprisonment is a state execution.
Often reserved for traitors, subversives and other political enemies of the state. State executions are public affairs aired and discussed for days afterwards in an effort to deter and prevent other persons from committing the same capital offenses.
Executions are carried out by a variety of means. Poison, injected or a gas, firing squad, guillotine, hanging. Any means designed to produce a spectacle. 
There is seldom an official executioner. Generally such a person is chosen by lottery or worse is an automated system under computer control. 
The problem with state executions is that it is not a true deterrent. There is always someone to take the place of the person who was executed. Thus alternatives that are worse than death have been researched.
Through simsense a person can be made to believe that  they have suffered through decades of torture and imprisonment. The process taking only a few moments in real time. Yet those memories of a lifetime of pain and suffering are there. A person can be made to feel that they have died multiple times to the point of driving them mad. 
The nastiest part of simsense punishment is that it can be recorded and then sold on the market to that niche market who enjoys viewing such gore. Some people get off watching the prisoners being tortured in the most cruel and inhumane ways possible and it is allowed because what happens inside a person's mind is just their imagination. So say  the proponents of simsense punishment. You cannot legislate imagination just as you  cannot legislate someone's dreams.
The future will be open to more interpretations and the courts look into continuing executions or not.