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The death penalty should be used only for white collar crimes and violations of the public trust. These crimes have the greatest impact on society, and usually have the strongest evidence reducing the chances of a wrongful conviction.
The death penalty is just legal murder, and, by the very nature of bestowing that privilege onto some power structure, creates a perverse incentive. Now whoever controls the legal system gets to decide who is worthy of living and who is worthy of dying simply by deciding what counts as a "white collar crime"
That kind of power is resented by those worthy of wielding it, and coveted by those who would abuse it. The perfect recipe for despotism.
A stronger argument IMO is that those types of crimes are premeditated, calculated and committed by those who have many other options. So deterrents are likely to actually work against them.
Not that I agree with you. But there's an argument to be made for using deterrents where they are likely to work. Rather than against the desperate or impulsive.
there should be no death penalty.