Hazard #6 (Image Comics, 1996) reprinted a Usenet article written by Troy Osgood in which he talked about heroes & killing. Basically he didn't understand no kill heroes like Batman & Superman & didn't like kill-em-all 'heroes' like the Punisher, but he liked Hazard because while he didn't like to kill he could if necessary, but what really struck me as the big nit in his article was that he felt that Batman was wrong for not killing the Joker & how Batman is responsible for the hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths caused by the Joker.

My problem is that it sounds like he thinks it is Batman's 'job' to kill the Joker.

For most of his comic book life, Batman has been an honorary policeman. It is not the job of the police to go out and shoot people what need shootin'. It is their job to capture criminals so the state can put them on trial and punish them.

That is what Batman does and he does it well.

The problem is the judicial system.

Well, technically it's the writers & editors not wanting to kill off popular villains, so they play fast and loose with how the law works in their fictional universe. ;-)

However, in the real world, police capture crooks, then DAs have to decide if they want to go for a death penalty conviction or a lesser charge, defense attorneys try to get various bits of evidence thrown out and/or try to convince the court that their client didn't understand right and wrong, etc., etc.

Heck, even when there is a death penalty conviction, decades can go by before the crook has to worry about execution.

On the other hand arguing that superheroes should kill ignores the fact that when police have situations where they must use lethal force, they usually get raked over the coals by the press and Internal Affairs.

The Punisher can 'kill-em-all' because he's not officially sanctioned and will be arrested, if caught.

A hero who is sanctioned by the police doesn't really have the luxury to play judge, jury and executioner.

Is Batman really an honorary policeman, or does the police simply look the other way because he mostly plays by the rules and he can go places and do things they are not allowed to?

In the last story of the original Batman #7 (October/November 1941) Gordon made Batman an honorary member of the police. Somewhere in the '40s or '50s he was made an honorary policeman in jurisdictions around the world (at least one story showed all the badges he had).

There were some stories in the '70s where some writers seemed to be unaware of this, but other writers seemed to take it as canon.

Post-Crisis seems to have continued that part of canon until Zero Hour in 1994 when then Batman editor Denny O'Neil decided that Batman was to be considered an urban myth by the general public. I'm not sure what Batman's status was after that, but I did say "most of his comic book life". ;-)

Then there are circumstances where the hero has no choice but to kill.

In the Superman story, Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow, that is exactly the case. Mxyzptlk had gone rogue and already caused the deaths of many people (among them Lana Lang and Jimmy Olsen). And he made it clear to Superman that this was just the beginning. No doubt all of Earth was next.

Considering that Mxyzptlk was magical, conventional means would not apply here. Superman could not simply knock him unconscious and hand him over to the authorities. Nor was there time to wait for a magical hero to show up, who might be able to match Mxyzptlk. Superman was simply out of options, except one, kill Mxyzptlk, which he did.

Now, I know Superman vowed never to kill, but in this case, there simply was no other way. By killing Mxyzptlk, he saved billions of lives (including that of Lois Lane). As a certain Vulcan is fond of saying: "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one."