Returning to the topic of death penalty:

1. As pointed out by many, death penalty is like a cat. Once it’s out of the bag, you can’t control whether those executed are “really really obviously” guilty or one of those many cases where they were “really really obviously guilty” until DNA established their innocence (for example).

2. Each case is unique and there’s no way to establish some objective parameters that would exclude such mistaken cases. All criminal guilty verdicts are “beyond reasonable doubt”, they’re all on the same plane, so if you can execute a guy caught on video and you can’t someone whose guilt is proven “merely” by forensics/witnesses, it’s not fair, because they were judged by the same “beyond reasonable doubt” standard - if there is an actual doubt about the second guy, he should not be in prison in the first place, right? And if there’s no reasonable doubt, execute away, right?

And that was all under the assumption that no deliberate foul play was involved, that the jury was reasonable, that forensic evidence is all that it’s made out to be etc., etc.

3. Limiting death penalty to only very few “crimes against humanity”/”war crimes” cases doesn’t work either. This presupposes that all countries will act in a responsible manner in such cases. Would you trust e.g. Russia “judging” alleged Ukrainian “war criminals”? I hope not. But if the door is open for death penalty in exceptional cases, there’s no argument against its use by “bad actors”. (They may do it anyway, of course, but sometimes “saving face”/”example of others” is actually a very important political factor. And you can’t complain about them having DP when you have it too. You can only complain about the allegedly unfair process and that’s weak.)

4. Nuremberg, Eichmann, etc. - an emotional appeal, so to say. Sort of a logical fallacy, actually. Well, no, I don’t cry for those criminals, but if they were judged today, I would hope that they would be judged according to civilized norms that would not include death penalty.

5. No, this logic doesn’t mean that we should also get rid of prisons etc. Prisons are a necessary evil, and for those innocents who are there there’s at least a chance of proving innocence. DP is both unnecessary and final. That means that it’s a special case without an analog.

6. I don’t find the arguments like “it’s vengeance so it’s not good” or “state should not be in the business of killing people” persuasive. If there was a perfect judicial system, then I would probably be for DP in some cases. Yes, there are cases, in theory, where DP is appropriate. I’m only against DP because such a justice system is unattainable.