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[Larix]

It's not just about killing him. The punishment must fit the crime.

What I meant was, why not set the ballista to fire instead of just "prepare to fire." Having a large weapon aimed at you but never actually going off doesn't seem like a fitting punishment for cold-blooded murder, to me.

It wasn't cold-blooded murder, it was misconduct in warfare, by a hostile unit. In this fortress, my dwarfs' code of conduct says they cannot condemn and kill somebody not part of their civ. They can _show_ him what they think his actions deserve, though. And there's always the possibility that this fort's ethics might decay or something makes them angry enough to pull triggers some time.

I had actually wanted to chain the killer in the kid's grave, but learnt to my dismay that you can't move a chained prisoner from one chain to another - i had already chained him up in the jail. So this was a nice alternative. I wanted to single him out and make absolutely clear that i disapproved of him. Killing him would just send him to the garbage pile and free the cell. Thoroughly unmemorable.

[Button]

You can construct a cage, assign him to the cage, deconstruct the cage, and reassign to another chain.

[Victor6]

Considering the dwarf ballista has an execution capacity somewhere on par with;-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYV-qYeWPkk.

firing it would be a waste of fort resources.

Prisoners are more likely to die of old age\starvation before the ballista actually hits them.

[Larix]

You can construct a cage, assign him to the cage, deconstruct the cage, and reassign to another chain.

No, i can't. Built cages don't list chained prisoners in the assign creature list. And i have twenty-eight chained prisoners in that fort, they'd be hard to miss; it's not their being walled off, either - i removed the wall in front of one of them (and re-built it after verifying) and the open path didn't make him/her assignable to the cage. It seems that chained hostiles cannot be moved to a new cage/chain via the assign menu.

You'd probably need to unassign/release them - i haven't tried that, because i don't disarm my prisoners and don't want to learn whether or not released prisoners are automatically re-caged by letting a civilian try it out. Alternatively, one could build a cage trap in the only exit and release the prisoner from the chain remotely, via linked lever. Too much hassle, and pointing a loaded siege weapon at a prisoner just to show disapproval struck me as supremely dwarven.