No (and yes)! What is forgotten about the death penalty is that it was imposed on such a random basis. Even back in the thirties, when it was imposed most, the convicted murderer had only a one in three chance of being executed.The remainder were sentenced to death, that being the only penalty allowed under law, but saved by the Home Secretary recommending clemency. Whether the murderer was hanged or not would depend on, inter alia,public sentiment, whether the case was high profile and widely reported, the personal biases of the individual Home Secretary, whether there were votes in it and , possibly, the state of the Home Secretary's digestion when he read the case papers.
And it depends why you want the death penalty. If you see it purely on moral grounds, a life for a life, a deserved penalty to fit the crime, that's fine. If you think it is the ultimate way of keeping a potential murderer off the streets, then there's little evidence that any jailed murderer repeats the crime after release.If you think it's a deterrent then there's no evidence that it ever is. There's no serious and proper study that indicates so. Most murders are domestic in nature and a high percentage of murderers spoil our fun by killing themselves anyway.Such killers are not dissuaded by the thought of the consequences when they kill (if indeed, any potential murderer is).And a great many such killers escape an conviction for murder by pleading 'diminished responsibility' a defence not open to killers many years ago.
Weigh that all against argument of the cases of wrongful conviction and , on balance, I'm against the death penalty .