Some death penalty statistics that won't do much to convince you of that punishment's utility

In California, the state with the most inmates on death row, it costs $175,000 per year to confine them, as opposed to $47,000 per year for other inmates, and they stay on death row an average of 25 years from conviction to being executed. To those who argue that the death penalty is a deterrent, one might argue that only those rational enough to consider consequences would take that into consideration, which rules out many killers.
     Since between 1/3 and half of murders are unsolved; punishment — no matter what it is — will never be as much of a deterrent as strong likelihood that the perp will be brought to justice.
     The odds are as good as even that you the perp in any particular murder won't even be prosecuted, much less convicted  — and many criminals, especially those reckless enough to kill people in the first place, are also egotistical enough to think that the odds won't apply to them, regardless of what those odds are.
     And then there is the most compelling argument of all: the thousands of people convicted of rape and murder who have been exonerated by DNA evidence alone. Capital punishment is unique among punishments in that it allows no chance of restitution or release of innocents unjustly executed because of police or prosecutorial misconduct, like coerced confessions —  or the perjury of jailhouse snitches bribed with shorter sentences by authorities — or supression of evidence, etc., etc.

Embedded from CA Innocence Project