[fakedang]

Part of the reason for America's variance in trial decisions is related to the jury system, which imo is highly flawed. You're essentially putting the lives of the innocent and the guilty in the hands of a set of people who barely have any training in unbiased analysis. And more importantly, with the jury system, you do not have a way of establishing precedence.

As proof of this, the most successful legal system in the US, the Delaware Chancery Court, is a non-jury trial court.

> Why retain it as a potential punishment if the burden of proof to obtain it is impossible?

India has the death penalty, but they use it for the most egregious of crimes (brutal rape-murders like the one in 2012, terrorists, gangland bosses, etc.).

[wildzzz]

Just because a crime is especially egregious doesn't mean that the accused is more guilty than any other crime. I fail to see why a rape-murder should give the accused less time to prove their innocence than just a regular murder or rape. The punishment should fit the crime obviously, a murder is more egregious than petty theft but how does society benefit from killing potentially innocent people other than revenge that politicians can boast about in their campaigns?

[fakedang]

Oh, I don't mean cases that still hang in the air, but those which are closed-and-shut cases. The 2012 gangrape-murder in Delhi, India, was such a scenario - they found DNA evidence, evidence of gruesome rape with metal rods, a brutal murder and disposal of the body, and eye witness testimony of the boyfriend, and the entire nation in uproar. The death penalty was the only suitable verdict then - in fact, delaying it was a major reason the then-government lost power.

Then again, in India, we also had a rape in 2017, where the same thing happened with a 6 yr old Muslim child, but because the perps were lackeys of the ruling party at the center and the victim Muslim, the case was mostly forgotten within a few weeks. Doesn't help that the media was in the pockets of the ruling party too (still is).

There is an obvious merit to using the death penalty - after all, why should taxpayer money be used to fund the imprisonment of those who have already proven that they're the worst of society?