Even if the robots themselves won't have many rights, humans will try to get them more rights by electing the politicians that will do it. Why would humans do that? Because I believe we will become emotional towards them. We can easily become emotional towards our pets, so it should be even easier with a robot that is even smarter than that. Heck, some people are even somewhat emotional towards their iPhones.

The first step towards becoming more emotional will be naming them. I remember reading a couple of years ago about that cleaning robot Roomba, and how people started naming them, and when they were giving them away for repairing, they demanded the same robot back, not a replacement.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21102202/ns/technology_and_scien...

http://gizmodo.com/5483750/peoples-emotional-attachment-to-r...

I kinda agree with you but then, there's the uncanny valley. I think slavery ended by slaves fighting for their rights more than the 'masters' being the source behind the movement. I read many 'masters' were emotionally and even romantically involved but didn't fought so much as cope with the system.

You raise an interesting point with the slavery. I'm not sure if it's such a good analogy, but saying it is, Abraham Lincoln did try to free the slaves. There will be people, probably a lot of people, who will feel threatened by them, just like now there are people being afraid of robots taking their jobs (which is another interesting debate), but things will still change gradually, as robots become smart enough, "lovable" enough, and human-like enough, and some people will even want to marry them.

A few years ago I was reading sort of a joke, that by 2050, Massachusetts will be the first state that will allow human-to-robot marriages.

There's already this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9q4qwLknKag

weren't humans put to death by killing or stealing horse. when horse was vital resource this was considered righteous thing to do. So to answer;. if AI was somehow vital resource to someone , it could possibly be that someone would get sentenced to death if one disables it.

To answer your question:

If some countries that have capital punishment don't get civilized by the time we have human-level AI, then yes, that would be logical. There is no difference between a mind run on a biological brain and a silicon brain. Killing either is murder.