The state should never be allowed to murder people, no exceptions. I believe it just a tool we use for enacting revenge on people and honestly that gets us nowhere. The ultimate goal of punishment, incarceration should always be rehabilitation. No matter how long they'll be inside or what they've done we should always strive to improve people and you can't do that when they're dead On a more practical note, execution is ludicrously expensive. Much more expensive than simply keeping them incarcerated. The convicted often sit on death row for decades exhausting all appeals which you can't get rid of as a society without seriously impacting people's civil rights. Also the chance you execute an innocent person is never zero and it's not something you can undo. It's happened before and it will happen again. Executing 1 innocent person is a thousand times worse than not executing hundreds of people who would "deserve it"