"I think this is gonna be a problem..."
'Er... okay. How exactly?'
"Moving forward in our day to day lives."
Wot? Considering I'm not campaigning for the abolition of the death penalty and I'm not penpals with anyone - especially not an incarcerated mass-murderer, I'm not sure how it's relevant to our daily lives. I don't mention my views on the death penalty at all. The only person I have outright made my position clear to was you, and I only ever tiredly reiterate it after you repeatedly ask me to speak about it.
I can see how, 'That will be $15 and 87cents for your groceries - have a nice day!" 'Oh thank you - I OPPOSE THE DEATH PENALTY! - oh, do keep the change...' would be an annoyance and an issue in daily life. But when it comes up on the news or you mention it in passing due to a related issue, I say sod all. I don't even roll my eyes or look scathing and morally vexed or whatever.
You've repeatedly asked me to justify my opinion. (I do in the same one or two sentences every time, and my opinion still hasn't changed.)
I am opposed to the death penalty because even if murderers deserve to die, I believe that as a society it is our moral duty to show mercy even to the undeserving.
Humanity's idea of crime, punishment and justice has fluctuated wildly between times and places. Other than a basic universal understanding of those concepts, humanity has been pretty diverse in interpreting and reinterpreting them.
You tell me my opinion is just wrong, as if I am one lone voice against not only the tide but the entire ocean. If that truly is the case then why is the world divided between places that uphold capital punishment and those that have abolished it? Why have some countries who have the death penalty failed to execute anyone in the last ten years? Why as we have evolved as a species are we moving away from capital punishment?
Justify myself? If you have never come across my viewpoint morally justified at PHD scholarship level and length amid the many philosophers the world has come up with across the globe; or reflected and refracted in novels and poetry... Then you really haven't read enough.
(To be clear, I'm not trying to change your stance on capital punishment. I'm simply trying to point out your blanket argument that I'm inherently 'wrong', is by humanity's current standards glaringly incorrect.)
To quote Max Fisher from 2011:
"This handy map from Wikimedia Commons shows how the world divides between countries with the death penalty (red), countries without (blue), countries that employ it only under rare 'special circumstances' (green), and countries that legally retain the death penalty but have not used it in at least 10 years (orange).
"The club of prisoner-executing nations is an inauspicious one. You've got the world's great dictatorships and autocracies (Iran, Zimbabwe, China, North Korea, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Egypt, Ethiopia, Cuba, Belarus), it's most failed and failing states (Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, Congo, Chad, Yemen, Guinea, Bangladesh), not to mention the entire Middle East save Israel.
"So who's left? Which countries use the death penalty but are neither among the world's most failed states nor its most autocratic? The outliers make a strange list: India, Japan, Nigeria, Uganda, Botswana, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Kuwait, Oman, Lebanon, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq and the United States. This is our league of capital punishment nations. Whatever the legal, ethical, social, and political arguments for and against the death penalty, its role in U.S. foreign policy, especially at a time when we are trying to convince leaders around the world to loosen restrictions and democratize, can be burdensome..."
(I couldn't find a more current map that wasn't behind a paywall. If anyone can find one, please link/post - I am curious what the last decade has wrought.)
Basically, when our science is so good that all admitted evidence is infallible. When our prison systems aren't fucked up, and have been reformed to where they can offer true rehabilitation rather than indoctrination into further crime. When laws have also been reformed and the police defunded and the bastards within their ranks expunged. When healthcare, education and welfare take up more of a government's budget than the military. When women have true autonomy over their own bodies - especially when pregnant. When there's sensible gun control. When (for example) Black and Trans Lives truly do matter: and Equity between race and gender and all the foolish or shitty historical denominations of humanity are no longer an issue. When billionaires pay taxes, homelessness is eradicated and there's Universal Income...
Then come back to me about my too liberal stance of thinking executions should be morally abhorrent to a modern society.