Atheist and the Death penalty

[Javaman]

What does give me pause about the Death Penality is this: that there are people who are up for the death penalty that have been found to be innocent, mostly through the work of The Innocence Project. So, I would support that The Innocence Project work with every person on death row prior to execution, to ensure that nothing has been overlooked for them.

Putting innocent people to death is not good.

And yet, it's inevitable in our "justice" system. The death penalty is not a deterrent to any crime for which it is applied as a punishment nor does it serve any function to rehabilitate the convicted. It is, essentially, a legalized system of revenge and serves no purpose in a just legal system.

Not only is it not a deterrent, but states without the death penalty have lower murder rates than states that have it. The evidence strongly suggests that if you wish to reduce the number of capital crimes in your jurisdiction, you should immediately abolish the death penalty.

The weird thing is that right wing conservatives are usually the ones in favour of the death penalty; at the same time, they're all about reducing taxes. The evidence plainly shows that applying the death penalty is a remarkably ineffective and inefficient use of tax dollars. So why are so many conservatives in favour of the death penalty? The range of possible answers is getting smaller and smaller.