Certainly innocent people get charged with and even convicted of crimes; they're victims of a shoddy justice system as much as others are. I did say the justice system was imperfect. But that goes both ways. Victims of crime have been let down by the justice system at least as much- and I maintain a good deal more often. For every wrongly accused rapist, I could probably show you 20 rape victims who did NOT receive justice or even a fair day in court. It's especially atrocious down here, where popular opinion supports the raping of girls in miniskirts because they're "asking for it." Schoolgirls often wear one piece swimsuits under their uniforms in the hopes that it makes sexual assault more difficult.
Have you ever actually looked at the rap sheets of a variety of sex offenders and/or murderers? I've had to do a lot of crime reporting in my career and they often have one thing in common: a list of collars that go back many years and include everything from petty theft to harassment and assault. If one were able to access juvie records, you'd probably find the exact same stuff (which gets magically erased when the perp comes of age.)
Case in point. A man went into a senior home and raped a 90 year old woman behind the chapel altar on Easter afternoon. He broke both her legs and might have escaped had he not been discovered by a nurse who called police. Fortunately they caught him, and the assault was reported just like any old assault. The thing is, I SAW his rap sheet. He had no fewer than 15 convictions for minor and major crimes over the last 10 years, including three prior sexual assaults. One of these was a case where he dragged a seven year old off her swing set and fondled her in the bushes for a while. The other two were attempted rapes on female joggers. Because there was no actual "penetration" he served no more than one year total for all three sexual assaults, AND he successfully petitioned the court to get out of a sex offender treatment program in exchange for an additional three months on his sentence. In addition to this, he had assault and battery charges, theft, and house breaking convictions.
Okay. This guy didn't commit one big crime that would get him put away for life. Instead, he injured and harmed numerous people throughout the years with crimes that, for whatever reason, are considered "less serious" by the courts. This felon's civil rights are well protected and the courts made damn sure that he served his measly amount of time- just to let him back out. He's just one man and his case isn't even all that outstanding. No one noticed him and he's already been forgotten. He's probably back on the streets by now.
My point, FGM, is that avoiding the death penalty simply because one is afraid that an innocent person- or even perhaps one whose crimes seem less serious- might be executed isn't sufficiently moving to me. Innocent people are harmed, maimed, robbed, terrorized, emotionally scarred, tortured, and dehumanized all the time by recidivist felons. If someone spends five years in prison for rape...how the hell does that help the woman who encounters him when he gets out? The courts are hoping that the prospect of going back to prison will be a sufficient deterrent, but that's a gamble. If someone has a psychological need to act out in a certain way, all the jail time in the world is not going to fix that.
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