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Several years back, there was a case of two knuckleheads who were in prison together, and when they got out, they planned a home invasion.
They broke in, beat the crap out of the husband/father, and chained him to a pole in the basement. Then they tied up the mom and two teenage daughters. They terrorized them all night, raped the younger daughter. In the morning, one asshole took the mother to the bank, and forced her to withdraw a bunch of money from the teller. The mother tried to attract the teller's attention with her eyes and facial expressions, but the teller didn't pick up on it.
He took her home, and tied her up again. Then they poured gasoline around the house, including pouring it across one of the girls, tied to her bed. Then they set it on fire.
The husband, smelling the smoke, finally broke loose, crawled out a window and ran next door to call the police. The cops got there quick (really nice neighborhood), and arrived just as the two idiots burst out the front door of the burning house. They were apprehended on the front lawn, smelling like gasoline, and immediately started blaming the entire debacle on each other, as if it made a difference.
The mother and two daughters died in the fire. At least one of the girls had broken loose, but died of smoke inhalation before reaching the steps to downstairs. The husband survived his injuries, and positively identified both dickheads. There was absolutely no doubt that these guys were 1000% guilty. There was no way that some slick defense lawyer was going to be able to make any kind of case for another suspect, a coerced confession, a sketchy identification, poor police procedure, etc.
This happened in Connecticut, which didn't have the death penalty. At the time, I spoke with numerous Connecticut residents who were ALL willing to make an exception for these two scumbags.
This is the kind of evidence I'm talking about. Sure, many crimes have some ambiguity, and wouldn't be eligible for the death penalty under my suggested protocols, but that wasnt the case with these guys. They were caught on the scene, and immediately confessed to the crime, as their victims were dying in the fire, and then were identified by the one surviving victim. This wasn't just beyond reasonable doubt, this was beyond ANY sort of doubt. These guys earned their death penalties, and it's a shame they can't be carried out.
You're pointing out all the reasons where a prosecution could go wrong and potentially condemn an innocent person, and I agree with ALL of them. But occasionally there is the combination of a particularly heinous murder AND the lack of any possible doubt at all, and these are the crimes I'm suggesting should be eligible for the death penalty. They are very rare, and like I first said, would probably only happen a handful of times in an entire decade.
Maybe the two were innocent because they were being controlled remotely by a CIA mind control ray, innocent victims of abhorrent government experiments.
Reasonable doubt? No. But there is always some doubt.