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There can always be error. I'm not saying that there is on the two cases you keep bringing up but the sad fact is that prosecutors can withhold exonerating evidence, defense council can be next to useless, judges can be biased, defendants can have mental health issues and developmental problems and so on.
You can't just hand wave these concerns away and advocate for executing only the people who confess and send the rest to prison for life. That distinction is too messy and open to abuse.
I'M not talking about contested cases, I'm talking about monsters with human body parts cooking on their stove and in their fridge:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Dahmer
Or buried in their crawlspace:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wayne_Gacy
These are the sorts of cases the death penalty should be reserved for. Horrific crimes, no concievable evidence of innocence.
There's nuance here you're just not willing to accept, that's why you keep bringing up the worst of the worst like that's a persuasive argument.
There's a sliding scale of criminality. At some point someone has to make a determination between the most egregious, who are executed, and less vicious crimes where the defendant is jailed indefinitely. The person who is making that determination cannot ever be wrong for your approach to work.
That's my point, mistakes were and are being made because that's what happens when you ask people to make these decisions.
Because, as I've stated from the very start, I believe the death penalty should be reserved for the worst of the worst.
It might mean only applying it once or twice a decade, but in cases of monsters we need to have that option.
That's not how the legal system works, at all.
Your slightly strange obsession with "monsters" is clouding your ability to think critically on this issue.
Again, please read what I said from the beginning. You seem to be ignoring what I'm saying in favor of your own set opinion.
From my very first comment I stated that the death penalty is problematic, but that it should be reformed and kept for the most egregious crimes.
I get "that's not the way it is now", I'm arguing that it should be changed and kept and not just abandoned just because it's currently mis-applied.
In my state, the Governor single handedly put on hold every death penalty case. There were, I think, 17 of them.
In MOST cases, life in prison seems adequate.
https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/2015/11/randy_guzek_sentenced_to_death.html
Double murder commited during a robbery? That's pretty mundane for a death penalty case. By all means, let's put him away for life.
Then there was this guy:
https://www.kgw.com/article/news/investigations/oregon-governor-death-sentence-clemency-christian-longo/283-6008ce2d-998a-4b9e-8dcf-4da42d1c3986
He strangled his wife and three little kids, stuffed them in suitcases, threw their bodies off a cliff, and fled to Mexico. There's no "error" there, there's no "extenuating circumstances". He betrayed the trust of his own children and murdered them, ages 4, 3 and 2. Fuck that guy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Longo
Go look in the mirror, you're describing yourself, not me.
Look at the examples you keep referring to. How to you make the distinction between the two examples you mention? The law does not and changing it to accommodate a distinction between run of the mill murder and murder + icky things is ridiculous.
Because one person murdered their own minor children. That's a huge violation of trust, then they violated the corpses in their attempt to escape.
Robberies gone bad happen all the time, what Longo did was a violation of human norms.
Right, so straight up murder = life in prison. Murder but you also fuck the corpse = straight to the gas chamber.
Weird.