Because it is irreversible, the death penalty should be reserved for cases in which there is no possibility of mistake. Which, given the fallibility of humans, is never.
I think when you admit on public television and public comms that you will commit war crimes and then you do commit war crimes we should have a notable exception - there's no possibility Pete Hegeseth didn't know exactly what, how, and when his war crimes were going to be perpetuated.
The death penalty was supposed to be for exceptional circumstances now, and look where we are. This country has put innocent people to death.
If you make exceptions, you will make more exceptions, and you are eventually guaranteed to put an innocent person to death due to the law of large numbers. A justice system must have a way to reverse mistakes to deliver justice properly, period.
Bad people doing bad things doesn't invalidate good people doing the right thing. If we kill innocent people that is bad, and we should require an incredibly high bar for this type of thing.
It becomes a slipper slope argument - well if we allow people to be jailed then inncocent people will be jailed and that's due to the law of large numbers, and there's no way to reverse our incredibly horrible prison system as it stands.
So now its my job to build our restorative justice system or... take out a few more nazis.
I don’t see how the death penalty adds anything here. There are already significant consequences. People who commit such crimes either do not expect to face the consequences or don’t consider the consequences at all.
Sure, and that might as well be said for any punishment at all for them. When you take mass human life you should not expect to stick around for your cronies to bust you out of jail in 10 years when the political winds have shifted for the worse again.