I still don't get the logic of people supporting killing people for killing people...

[Donald Ian Rankin]

52. For the same reason we prohibit vigilante imprisonment, of course.

None of what you say has anything specifically to do with the death penalty; it all applies uniformly to any form of "doing something bad to someone against their will".

We trust the legal system, with all its checks and balances, an expensive fact-determining apparatus behind it, and a set of values agreed upon by society through the democratic process to enforce, to only punish a small number of innocent people for each guilty person it punishes.

We don't trust vigilantes not to get it wrong much more often, and we also don't want each individual vigilante imposing their own version of morality rather than a consensus one.


That all applies to all punishments - fines and imprisonment just as much as to the death penalty.

The reason the DP is unique is that it's irreversible. I'm willing to accept the small risk of being wrongfully imprisoned, and the moral hazard of a small number of people being wrongfully imprisoned on my behalf, in exchange for the massive gain in security that locking up thieves and rapists gives me, because I know that there's a good chance that a wrongful punishment can be reversed. I'm not willing to accept the additional risk and hazard of people being executed, because the additional gain to my security is comparatively small and because when we get it wrong we're stuck with it, and so is the victim.

But that *doesn't* mean that I'm in any way certain that there aren't people it would be both just (because they've done such evil things) and utilitarian (because it would discourage others) for the state to kill. It just means that I don't trust the state to identify such people infallibly, and I don't think executing innocent people is a price worth paying for it.