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This idea that the issue doesn't matter for your opposition, but it matters for opponents of the death penalty that ought to be appeased is pretty contradictory.
Clearly you oppose the death penalty, and you are trying to get the pro death penalty people to support you, by claiming they should appease groups like BLM, and how pro death penalty position is just clinging to tradition. A theme of outdated tradition vs inherently better progressive evolution appears.
I find it a subversive argument to act as if conservatives and other non progressives should adopt your values on this issue, and somehow it will help them from "dying on a hill". It seems like an attempt to fool them to abandon their preference, and adopt yours, without you giving sufficient due care about whether they might be right. On the face of it, this isn't a valid argument. But since it isn't a new one, there are more that can be said.
We know from experience that more appeasement and compromise on issues like death penalty will not satiate those willing to proclaim likely black murderers as innocent. Nor will it satisfy those who think that more appeasement and compromise by the right is necessary. Conservatives who listened to many of this iterations of bad advice to abandon their non progressive positions out of a mentality that it is a dying hill to not do so, either actually became the liberals, or failed to oppose the liberals enforcing the BLM agenda. It has been a consistently self destructive way for non progressives to act, and had played its role in things moving further left.
Like many issues is a legitimate issue that its proponents have valid reasons to fight for. Why are you so confident on this issue to ask others to stop fighting for it?
Are you sure you should be fighting on this hill?
Just like taking stolen money and giving them to the rightful owners is not theft.
And like kidnapping and imprisonment the crime is not equivalent to putting the same people in prison.
Neither is executing sufficiently vile criminals and murderers the same scumbag behavior to their actual murders. Equivalency in this case, can lead to too little empathy towards those suffering from murderers, including towards the ideological opposition.
There is an element of justice that is about punishment and retribution and making things whole for the victims by punishing perpetrators which is stronger towards sufficiently vile crimes. Bringing catharsis to the victims and their relatives, and to society by taking from the criminals what they have taken from those who suffered. Symbolically, it can also help avoid a society that sympathizes too much with criminals, or even with black criminals in particular, or shows some crossover with these kind of sympathies. The death penalty can reinforce the ways of thinking of a society that symbolically cares more for victims of crime. And then your wording of "barbarians" and "scumbag" in this issue has a symbolic significance in the opposite direction.
Cost, is the result of organizations and a general faction that are pro releasing even guilty criminals. And which also care about race and support a pro black criminal two tier system. And the way to deal with this, is to target the organizations, and the faction who are pushing this agenda even outside the death penalty.
Additionally, there are other valid considerations where the death penalty would apply. Cost and showing more care for victims than criminals which is connected to general anticrime policies is one thing. Others can be for example, mob bosses that remain influential, or people who would continue to murder inside prison, or the possibility of people being released in the future, by a more pro criminal system. At least by executing them now, you don't give them the opportunity to reofend. Which is a realistic issue in the circumstances.
I do agree that harsher treatment is not always better. There are crimes that it would be disproportionate, but these isn't the ones the death penalty is talked about in this debate. Still, empathy even towards offenders has its role. But too much empathy towards the worst criminals, does compete with empathy towards victims and is directly related with policies that help them reoffend.
While there are less passionate opponents of the death penalty who are so for various reasons, the death penalty debate among those who are more animated about it is also to a great extend about people who are willing to call actual murderers as innocents. It is a part of the general pro criminal vs anti-criminal conflict and the general conflict between people who have a wrong, and ironically racist view about black Americans being victimized by a white supremacist anti black system, when the reality is that black Americans are actually the demographic that engages in statistically the more predatory and criminal behavior, and black criminals should be punished for the common good. The response to those who sympathize with murderers and especially sympathize with black murderers, can't be to agree with them that an injustice of any sort is happening to these people. Or that society is failing to fulfill its duty towards them.
Executing criminals that are sufficiently vile is not barbaric, scumbag behavior, or a moral affront.
I guess one area I do agree with people more of your persuasion, is that prisons should not be unsafe, and there should be sufficient oversight so the places have order, are relatively clean, and there isn't violence and rape. Ironically, executing people who murder other inmates in prison, might help with that.
Rehabilitation like punishment is an element of justice, one that like punishment, becomes more significant in certain cases. And this applies more so in the less violent offenses.
Let me try an analogy. I am pro choice of Singerian variant, which means that I don't think that fundamentally, third trimester abortions to the point of infanticide are not evil per se (only evil in so far as someone would like to raise the kid, and is deprived of that chance). However, I think that politically, it is not savvy to campaign for third trimester abortions. There is a significant demographic which is fine with first trimester abortions but which will strictly oppose third trimester ones. Also, the number of cases for third trimester are small compared to the earlier ones. Allowing 3rd trimester abortions will allow pro life radicals to pull a lot of moderates to their side with pictures of dead babies.
I don't think that policy issues generally are resolved better when they become partisan, with each side claiming an extremist position.
For the purpose of my argument, the radical pro life side ("abortions should always be tried as murder") corresponds to BLM radicals ("When we say 'defund the police', we mean abolishing it"). The moderates are the ones who dislike the death penalty or the 3rd trimester abortions, but don't really care too much about Dobbs or criminal justice otherwise. The point of view I am arguing is people who care strongly about criminal justice or abortion rights, and are fine with the death penalty or 3rd trimester abortions, but would lose popular support if they demanded that.
(Another thing to consider is that among the left, the moderates generally refuse to be alienated by the radicals, with the moderates claiming that 'When people demand X, they obviously don't mean Y, but Z'. (X: "defund the police", Y: "abolishing the police", Z: "move some of the police budget to social services" or X: "From the river to the sea", Y: "destroy Israel", Z: "a two state solution").)
Now, you could counter that late abortions are much less popular than the death penalty, and that could be correct, especially if one considers individual jurisdictions like Texas.
I think that we agree that there are some crimes which are similar to means states should use -- with sufficient procedural safeguards -- as punishment (theft, kidnapping). We likely also agree that there are some acts which are considered crimes when random citizens do them which would still be bad it we had the state do them (rape, torture). We seem to have different moral intuitions into which of the two camps the act of killing a person against their will should fall.
FWIW, I do not consider the death penalty with sufficient safe guards for sufficiently evil crimes to be a great moral failing of the US. I don't like it, but only to the point that I will write on the motte about it. I really hated gitmo, though.
I think that justice should strive to be color-blind. If there are more violent criminals in a minority, the way I would spin this is that this very likely means that the non-criminals in that minority are exposed to more crime than suburban Whites. If police is more reluctant to take action against Black men abusing their partners than against White men abusing theirs, then they are failing Black women, which is something the wokes should care about.
You are pro murder in my view if you don't care about killing babies that are sufficiently late term. There can be some very rare exceptions, but supporting it in general is a rightfully hated position.
I don't understand your analogy. How is killing "vile criminals" similar to killing developed babies?
Supporting third trimester abortions is not just not savvy but a position that people find morally abhorrent for valid reasons that are much more understandable than any claim of moral abhorrence towards execution of murderous criminals.
Third trimester abortion is an extreme position. Singerian viewpoint can even support infanticide. In my view, treating after birth bill or immediate abortion as equivalen of murder is also an extreme position. But certainly your position is far worse.
I can understand how "all abortion is murder" can be not savvy electorally. Although, calls of compromise it is very harmful to the right. It's part of the mechanism for why things are so far left, because leftists including leftists who captured influence in right wing circles, ask for more compromise, with the end result the right becoming more of the left.
So, for example as far as late term abortions go, there is nothing wrong with making supporting it a taboo, and even criminal prosecutions of legislators and those doing them. Outside of some few exception.
Not caring too much is so commonly offered by people here as a "moderate position" especially by liberals towards right wingers. It is not a moderate position to not care. It can even be the opposite. It also not sensible to paint valid positions as extreme.
The death penalty is not an extreme position. It might be an unfashionable position in certain countries today, but that doesn't make it an extreme position. I would give you that, it doesn't make you an extremist to oppose the death penalty, weakly. Frankly, I respect to an extend the argument of fear of getting it wrong, or fear of the state abusing its power.
But the animating feelings among those strongly opposing it in discourse I have seen is about this idea of inoccent, framed, or falsely accused, especially black murderers. And how an injustice is done to them.
I would say that the right and people in general need to support valid positions that go against the pieties and orthodoxies of the left and of its associated sacred cows. Ironically easy conformism is the road to the worst extremism and what is fashionable is not something to just compromise and allow others to define, but something that can be fought over and change.
Moving the budget of the police to social services and defunding police somewhat has lead to increase of crime rates and is in fact an extreme position. The so called moderate left have promoted a very distorted picture of the world, and soft on crime and two tier justice policies. As always as narratives of that.
The moderate left are just extremists who are more moderate about their destructive agenda in my view. To a great extend, the moderate left doesn't exist, because what they want which is similiar to the BLM type agenda but not as far, is not moderate! To the extend something that can be considered moderate left exists, which is genuinely moderate, it must be a very small faction.
Fair.
You can't address the problem of pro black bias, by making it all about how blacks suffer more. You reinforce the woke ideology when your opposition to it is about primarily how it hurts blacks more. It can be part of the things you mention that such murderers also harm blacks but you shouldn't adopt the morality that prioritizes blacks.
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