The government should not have the power to execute people as that power will eventually be abused to carry out a greater injustice. Do you think the death penalty will not be eventually used on political prisoners? A 2014 study estimates that at least 4% of death row inmates are innocent...
Say, for the sake of argument, that this number still holds up (because of recent political events it probably won't and will be instead much higher) - is the death of 82 innocent people warranted for moral retribution that, in some cases, is opposed by the family of victims and doesn't always...
...help with healing and processing the trauma?
200 hundred innocent people have already been posthumously exonerated only in the US. Exonerated! That's only the ones who got their justice in the end! What about the ones that didn't?! These people, of course, won't see their injustice fixed, as they've been murdered by the state.
If killing is wrong, then it’s wrong (not just when someone else does it). If the death penalty actually was a deterrent then why is the homicide rate in the US 5 times the UK’s? Our executioner, Albert Pierpoint, is understood to have said that he didn’t think his job had saved a single life.
200*, not 200 hundred
You've said in different responses to this thread that other people are putting the needs of the criminals above their victims'. You, however, are putting your own moral sensibilities above, and I can't stress this enough, ///the lives of innocent people///. Is that just?