I struggle with the death penalty, in terms of morality. I don't politically advocate for it and I can..I have the means to make a change.

From a humanitarian standpoint I’m against death penalty. Besides the issue of injustices at the judicial system, we fight with lack of equality, lack of systems that secure no one is sentenced above their cognitive abilities. Only then we could start considering a death penalty as the ultimate punishment for crimes. However, we have politicians who well-knowing will vote for state crimes without even considering it criminal behavior. There’s no justice in the current situation.

What I like about the idea of a death penalty, in an ideal world where it could be done quickly, is that it removes a problem permanently. The risk from that individual is eliminated. Nobody else has to deal with them. We don't just pass the problem over to the poor prison staff who have to risk their own lives every day keeping these people locked up.

What I don't like about the death penalty is:

The justice system can make mistakes. Innocent people can end up being executed.
In the real world and in a democracy it ends up being very costly in terms of endless appeals and stays of execution which can end up taking decades.
It is not a deterrent. Crime has never stopped because of the death penalty.

So while I like the idea of it, the reality of it is that it is very inefficient and ineffective and innocent people can end up dying.

I have always been in this general limbo where ~97% of me opposes capital punishment at the least because I know innocent people have been put to death, and even with more advanced investigative tools today, I'm still not confident that does not / will not continue to happen now and in the future, where just a few years or months down the line new evidence would come to light that would posthumously clear the executed individual

I have no illusions that the death penalty really serves as any deterrent either, at least not for all crime ... maybe it sways a few would-be crminals, but not completely enough to hold it up as a solution

But the other 3% of me feels in some rare cases it is acceptable, maybe this is a baser revenge instinct within me I should evolve out of or something, but for example over at least the last decade we've seen examples of where massive wildfires that caused vast destruction death of wildlife and death of people, which were actually started by intentional arsonists. Part of me thinks that is worthy of death, and perhaps not even a quick painless death, I've seen both images of skeletons in cars which tried to flee the fires in Paradise California for example, as well as snuff films like Daesh burning a Jordanian Air Force pilot alive and I think that involves a lot of suffering before death finally comes. Certainly by now anyone who is not cognitively impaired must know if you commit arson in tinderbox regions in tinderbox seasons, it will likely lead to a massive uncontainable fire that will likely kill people and animals, never mind possibly rare old growth forests. Part of me is tempted to immolate the arsonist too (I know "eye for an eye" kind of reeks of primitive fundamentalism).

As you said, child predators are another good example, and at the truly extreme scale, someone like Hitler is a timeless example too.

But I think if we were at point of evolution where that 3% didn't exist in me, then similarly the arsonists, child predators and mass murderers / genocidal warm criminals likely wouldn't exist in the first place too.

I know it's also a slippery slope, if you can justify it for one criminal, then people will say okay, we can bring it back for all crimes too, so I don't know how you maintain a permanent consensus that capital punishment is mostly banned, but with asterisks.

I've always thought it would make sense to apply the death penalty only in the very rare cases where a crook can't be safely contained. Maybe cartel leaders, plutocrats, politicians guilty of high crimes against democracy. It does feel satisfying to say though in other cases, which I guess is not a great sign.

And ofc it obviously depends on the state of the country it's happening in. You obv do need a certain degree of development to begin with to maintain enough prisons to maintain the social peace.

It's a topic I've wrestled with as well. By and large, I favor rehabilitave corrections over punitive ones. I do not believe that prison should be a punishment, but that it is more of a precaution. Separate someone who represents a harm to society from society in order to protect the people in the society.

But, when all of that has been answered for and you run into someone who cannot be rehabilitated, then you have to consider permanent removal from society. A life behind bars or the death penalty. The thing I wrestle with is, which option for this person is actually more humane? Being kept in a cage for the rest of my life feels more cruel than a quick ending. But just because I feel that way doesn't mean they do. I just don't think there is a clearly objective correct answer. It's too messy with too many variables.

As a teenager I was against it and argued at school against. I was the only one. It was during the time of serious crime cases with dead girls. I'm still against it in principle. But I do know that during a crisis or a war those just go through the window easily enough too.

My current view, it would have to be for extremely cut and dry cases where there's absolutely no question of someone's innocence. No factors of 'he said, she said', false testimony, etc.

We put dogs down for simply biting people. I see no argument as to why someone should be allowed to live when they've committed a mass shooting, long history of violent offenses, child predation, things of that significance.

And it shouldn't matter whether or not they were in a proper state of mind. If they do anything on the scale of the aforementioned crimes, they should be removed.

The next problem is how it's performed. We spend millions of dollars on programs like lethal injection just for the injected drugs to fail or because the medical 'professional' couldn't get the vein. It's a joke when there are so many cheaper ways to go about it