Should the Government Sentence Violent Criminals to Death?

Whether or not the our government should be able to put people to death for committing violent crimes is yet another divisive topic. Some people support giving the government that power, some people oppose it, and some people are undecided. For this post, I would like to show why neither the government nor anybody else for that matter should have that authority.

For starters, it should be noted that in spite of my opposition to putting violent criminals to death, I have very little sympathy for such criminals and would like to see them permanently incarcerated. I also completely support the right to self defense against such people, even if that means that they die. My opposition is to putting people to death when it is also possible to safely incarcerate them.

Secondly, those who support the government putting violent criminals to death should ask themselves why they support it. Violent crime is certainly something most people would agree is a bad thing that must be stopped, but is there really a need to put violent criminals to death when we already have the ability to incarcerate such people? Probably not, so it is likely that supporters of putting violent criminals to death are motivated more by wanting revenge than by necessity. If so, supporters of that position do not have a sufficient justification for it. We should not be making laws that are based simply on wanting to get back at people or other emotions. Our laws should be out of necessity and not simply feelings. Some supporters of it may also argue that sentencing violent criminals to death deters crimes like murder, but most sources that have studied the issue, such as in the link below, show that there is no credible evidence for that claim.

https://files.deathpenaltyinfo.org/legacy/documents/NatResCouncil-Deterr.pdf

Third, there are occasions in which the wrong person is convicted. In the link below, for example, is a video in which a former Supreme Court Justice acknowledges that Texas put an innocent person to death in 1980. This does not happen particularly regularly, though the fact that it happens at all makes putting violent or any other criminals to death arguably unjust.

https://mediasite.video.ufl.edu/Mediasite/Play/a8a96264bef14244a722de47cdcefb071d

Lastly, the cost is problematic, particularly for taxpayers who likely do not want to be paying for this type of thing. According to the article in the link below from Ballotpedia, for instance, "A preliminary study by South Dakotans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, examining first-degree murder cases since 1985 that have resulted in a death sentence or life in prison, found that on average, legal costs in death penalty cases exceeded those in the other cases by $353,105." Our tax dollars pay for those legal costs, which should be of concern to even a conservative, since conservative people generally favor small government.

https://ballotpedia.org/Fact_check/Is_the_death_penalty_more_expensive_than_life_in_prison#cite_note-24

Truth be told, I respect people on all sides of this issue and I understand each one. My main hope here is for people who are on the "pro" side of it to think more deeply about their position with as much information on it as possible so that they can make a more informed decision about whether their position is good. I also hope for this to give other people on the "con" side of the issue better arguments for their position. Whatever your position is about this topic, it is ideal to have as much information on it as possible so that our positions can be based on as much information on it as we can get.