it's taken my whole life but i gotta go on record now and say that i'm fully against the death penalty.
my reasoning is pretty simple, but it was hard to get over some personal hangups. best way i'd rationalize it is this way: if i'm against international adoption based on the rate of kids falling through the cracks and magnitude of harm they experience as a result of that, even if it's in a minority of cases, it still informs a flawed system that does something egregious for every 2-3 cases it 'gets right'. but what even informs which cases are pursued to their logical ends? unfortunately, general racist perceptions and mental associations of black people and other minority groups inform the harshness of penalties, assumptions of criminality from state witnesses, etc. the historical arrangement of who has held power and who gets punished aligns too uncomfortably close with egregious oppression of black people systemically over a sustained period of several centuries for me to now assume the system works in an impartial and fair manner in a majority of cases.
and what's the return to society when they get 'the right guy'? nothing. and so many poc die callously by mistake for rhetorical purposes that cover for powerful people that don't want to do anything challenging to improve society in any meaningful way.
if you support the death penalty, i kindly ask you to reconsider. i've come around on it myself.