I think most murderers do deserve to die. If you take a life then you've got little argument that your's is of particular value. Euthanasia notwithstanding. So if there is zero doubt (like this Florida kid Cruz) then I've zero qualms. It saves the public of having to ask who amongst us has the fortitude to carry out justice.
To start this off with I'm in favour of the death penalty however I am most definitely conflicted. I know that emotionally if someone did anything to my family or friends I would want them gone.
Having said that there are a lot of hurdles that reality throws at us. One is the point I raised earlier in the thread which suggests that 'justice' is actually harder to obtain with the death penalty:
As an interesting sidenote when I was at uni a lecturer who was originally pro-death penalty was tasked to do research on the other sides views and came back with this. Studies have shown that juries, knowing that the accused being found guilty is likely to result in a death sentence, are statistically less likely to find the accused guilty. This presumably means guilty people are being let off because juries do not want to feel morally responsible for the deaths.
Other problems are the extreme cost of the death penalty. Now it's easy to say 'don't worry about that, just give me the gun' but then you have the state taking the lives of its citizens which I would expect most right wing folks to be thoroughly against. Unfortunately there's a trade of achieving the best possible justice at the best possible price, and when taking a life the cost is extreme.
In your post you wrote:
Most murderers do deserve to die. If the law reflected this the cost of any murder trial would skyrocket as, depending on how far this statement goes, no-one in their right mind will plead guilty to save the tax payers and the victims undue cost and stress and reliving the experience. I know it might seem like people are being let off but the cost to society, and the stress the victims might experience (especially if they go free at the end!) is worth a negotiated outcome.
Another part you wrote:
So if there is zero doubt. The law is already 'beyond all reasonable doubt' which to me essentially means the same thing. The jury should be in essence of the opinion that there is therefore zero doubt within the bounds of reasonable plausible explanations.
Thirdly applications of the death penalty are fallible. A lot of times people are given intravenous injections in order to sedate them and these are frequently criminals with drug abuse problems so their veins are not easy to find. The injections are not given by doctors due to their Hippocratic oath to defend and preserve life. They are usually given by prison orderlies. Failed injections can result in chemical burns and a failure for the sedative to work properly and the next lethal injection can be unbearably painful to even watch. People are strapped down because they turn themselves almost inside out from the pain and the body contorting. If you believe in all aspects of the constitution you should be concerned about the cruel and unusual punishment being dealt to people. If you believe a bullet to the head is fine there will be psychiatric pain for those executing others. The reason it is done in such a 'cold' environment with minimal human interaction is to reduce the emotional burden of those doing the execution.
Finally mistakes happen, especially to males, to people of low income & wealth, to minority groups and to people with learning disabilities. We have to consider how many innocent lives the state is willing to take in order to institute capital punishment on its other worst offenders. And make no mistake about it, this is a sliding scale, a trade off, where the amount of money you pour into the system directly affects the number of people incorrectly murdered by the state. So if you make cheap executions you must accept that innocent people are dying. I consider this something that both the left and right should rally against, that the emotional response to heinous crimes can have a resulting cost to others.
All in all I know I take the emotional argument that 'these murderous criminal lives are a cancer on society and should be purged' but there is a cost to pay.
