Can We Justify Execution?

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There is a movie called "A Short Movie on Killing" by the Polish director Kieslowski which depicts a youngster who kills a taxi driver brutally, a murder scene that really chills you, as it lasts around six minutes. Then, the youngster faces execution, which his lawyer failed to save him from, despite many humanistic and philosophic concerns he raised in the court. And the exceution is shown in the end, before which we get a glimpse of the youngster's unfortunate life, how he lost his sister whom he loved so dearly, to another brutal murderer, and so on. We see how much he cares for small girls who resembled his sister and how his mind was filled with hatred for men who who had dubious intents. As we watch him going through the last minutes of his life, we are forced to ask the question, do we have the right to kill someone, using our laws, because he has killed someone else? It was really difficult to sit through the fear and pain he goes through. Please do respond to this, even if you haven't seen the movie. We have all seen something similar to this on TV recently.