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While I agree that there are entirely too many rogues unhanged, I see a couple of problems.
First is the certainty of the verdict. People do get unjustly convicted. Some get off by a stool pigeon recanting, or by DNA or other scientific forensic test. Some don't. I'd hate to see the wrong man die for a crime he did not commit.
Second is the timeliness of the punishment. There was a psychological study of criminals that found the deterrent effect was not the severity of the sentence but its promptness. Supporting somebody on death row for long appeals before executing him is not very effective except in eliminating one likely recidivist. There was a killer here whose last round of appeals was that he had grown too senile in decades of prison to remember what he was convicted of. Absurd.
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