I believe in forgiving all just like our Lord told us to.
The thing is that even the Lord said that we need to be held accountable for our actions. He is not against punishment for correction, but
He is against punishment by death. That is to be left up to Him.
Actually, examination of the NT shows otherwise.
Paul supports the authority of the state to take the life of the guilty in Ro 13:1-6, where he states
that the authorities
which exist have been established by God,
that whoever rebels against authority
rebels against what God has instituted
and
will bring judgment on himself,
that the governing authority
does not bear the sword in vain (with no God-given authority to take the life of the guilty),
that the governing authority is an
agent of God's wrath to bring
punishment on the wrongdoer.
Likewise, when Peter drew his sword and cut off the ear of the High Priest's servant, Jesus told him to sheath his sword or he would suffer the death penalty if he killed ("he who lives by the sword will die by the sword").
If you don't believe me just
compare what the punishment was for adultery in the OT, to what the Lord said in the NT.
But Jesus made no prescription there regarding the punishment of adultery.
The woman brought to him could not be stoned, because the Mosaic legal grounds for doing so failed on three points.
Also look at what the
punishment was for working on the Sabbath in the OT, compared to what He said in the NT.
However, examination of the account shows that Jesus gave examples showing that they were
not violating the Sabbath by plucking grain,
that the Sabbath was made for man (for his rest), not man for the Sabbath (to suffer hunger by).
Jesus made no proscription there of the Law's punishment for working on the Sabbath.
He who is without sin cast the first stone, nobody is without sin
so nobody has the right to make that punishment decision on another.
The Jews brought the woman to him to expose her sin, hoping to trap Jesus between a rock and a hard place.
Instead, Jesus turned the tables on them, saying that whoever had never sinned should cast the first stone, and then started writing in the sand (which I suspect was writing each man's sin in the sand, which is why they left one by one).
At any rate, no one remained to stone her.
But he was not abrogating the law of stoning in certain cases of adultery,
he was simply turning the tables on them and exposing their sin as they had hoped to trap him by exposing her sin.
The NT does not condemn capital punishment, rather it supports it.