Does the mass-murdering criminal Jason "Red Hood" Todd canonically support the death penalty?
No, I can't find evidence that Red Hood supports the death penalty.
There is a difference between murder (illegal) and state-sanctioned killing (legal). Red Hood commits unlawful homicide. The death penalty is lawful homicide. Jason is a murderer. The death penalty is not legally considered murder. Commissioner Jim Gordon is a decorated military veteran, not a murderer.
Committing violence ≠ wanting the government to have the right to commit that violence. Batman and his allies brutalize criminals; they don't necessarily support the state brutalizing criminals. Red Hood kills some criminals; Red Hood doesn't necessarily support the state killing criminals. Catwoman doesn't necessarily support the state committing burglary. Et cetera.
The death penalty is administered by the criminal legal system. Jason does not like the criminal legal system (see some of his run-ins with the police). He grew up as an impoverished child who didn't believe in the system, he was raised by Batman to believe that vigilantes can make a difference that the system can't, and he became an adult criminal who still doesn't believe in the system. He's not interested in using the criminal legal system. He isn't interested in giving more powers and privileges to an abusive system that has wronged him and the people he cares about.
When Jason started up his villain business, the death penalty was legal in Gotham City. (See Detective Comics #644, The Joker: Devil's Advocate, Batgirl 2000 #19, Punchline #1.) The death penalty was also in place during his Robin run. Jason didn't argue in favor of the state having the right to kill prisoners, and the death penalty never addressed his complaints about the status quo.
Jason has rescued people from wrongful* imprisonment and the death penalty. Again, based on his own firsthand experiences, he has many reasons to believe that the system is broken. *Some of us would argue that locking any people in prisons tends to be wrongful and inhumane by default, but we could choose to accept the standard premises of crime fiction as without endorsing it as moral instruction.
Jason Todd is a criminal: a mass murderer, a terrorist, a villain. He does evil. He doesn't represent or support the legal system. He probably has the least political capital out of all the Batfamily-associated characters. He doesn't promote the death penalty. He commits murder—illegally, as a criminal, state-unapproved.
Some recent comics related to the topic:
Gotham Nights (2020) #11 "One Minute After Midnight", written by Marc Guggenheim
Red Hood and Nightwing team up to investigate the case of a man wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to be executed. Both of them disapprove of how the broken criminal legal system botched this case.
Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing #8 (2023), written by Matthew Rosenberg
"You familiar with Hannah Arendt's concept of Schreibtischtäter? Desk murderers? It's people who use the state to kill for them, so they don't have to get their hands dirty."
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it's funny because durge and gortash started at very similar places, wanting so badly to be "good kids" their entire childhoods. gortash to avoid further abuse at the hoh and durge because they were, excluding their one little huge thing where they had an uncontrollable bloodlust.
but then they also ended up at the same place but on opposite sides of the spectrum. druge is still trying(technically succeeding) to be a "good kid," just now for their insane dad instead of a conventional family. conversely gortash has thrown out any idea of "goodness,” he never wants to feel that way again and he doesn’t care if he makes others feel that way to avoid it. he’ll do whatever he wants to you and if you’re anything like him, powerful, resourceful, deserving, you’ll pull yourself up from your bootstraps like he did. it’s interesting to wonder the ways they might’ve clashed in their motivations
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not to be a hater (except it's totally to be a hater) but i do not understand people who think utena and touga would make a good couple. even ignoring how terribly he treats her, she just does not give a shit about him. after the first arc i bet she doesn't even remember his existence unless he's right in front of her and annoying her. she has object impermanence but only for touga kiryuu
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To this day one of the funniest fucking things to happen in this fandom was the collective British 1D fan realization that American 1D fans had absolutely zero context about the lyric “hole in the middle of my heart like a polo” and we all just sort of accepted it like yeah sure I can make that make sense
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made march 12th cake with @memberoflottiescult .........
back in summer we figured out that villanelle and julian devorak had the same birthday (they also speak the same amount of languages which is crazy?? and they both have a russian origin (in julian's case it's his birth name eg) hence the russian on the cake...). so we decided that we'll bake them a cake when the time comes. it's a badly decorated brownie. it was delicious though, my baking skills are fine
is there any point at which the arcana and killing eve demographics collide somewhere?? is this post for just two people..
remember to celebrate their birthday and happy march 12th!!!
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