Yes, the penalty's popular. It's increasingly clear, however, that people innocent of the crimes for which they've been convicted can be, and on occasion are, wrongfully executed. That needs to stop. Wrongful incarceration is bad enough, but the death penalty?
It's not as though we don't have the tools required to sift the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. People who are convicted solely or largely on the basis of "witness testimony" - which is notoriously unreliable - should never be sentenced to death. This is a special punishment, and it should be meted only in cases of unambiguous physical evidence.
If you don't buy into the argument, imagine yourself in this scenario.
Edgar Allen Poe only wrote horror stories, so far as we know.
