This is well-taken, but it implies that the only thing wrong with the death penalty is the likelihood of the wrong people being executed, not the fact of execution itself.
> The cost of execution is the price of innocent people killed. I don't
know how to calculate that number but it doesn't seem that retribution and
vengance balance it out.>
If there are just wars, not so say just revolutionary insurrections, both of these are replete with the deaths of innocents. (That's why it seems especially incongruous for any Leninist to oppose the death penalty.)
How meaningful retribution is felt to be obviously varies by person and circumstance. I wonder if anyone has any insight into why working-class persons are more supportive of the death penalty than higher-income people, or can cite evidence that this is not the case. I heard a talk by David Bositis, who does polling for the Joint Center (D.C.'s African-American oriented think tank), and he said that support for the death penalty is extremely high among African-Americans, especially younger males. I presume they are aware of the greater likelihood of a black person being executed than a white, and also greater if the victim was white than black.
Is it possible that opposition to capital punishment is a bourgeois liberal thing? I suspect it is, though I wouldn't mind being persuaded otherwise.
mbs