Someone texting while driving may kill a loved one, a father, a mother, a sister, a brother, friend and so on.
Though, you have cases of torture and heinous acts, the death penalty is rarely done, I know what qualifies but I'm sure a lot of other heinous acts are given the death penalty.
You can say, okay, then there should be 500 executions a year say, even 1,500 but that is not the reality of the situation, that is unreal and should not be considered. It's our 16,000 murders a year in the USA and around 25 executed a year.
All of the killings have victims and victims' families. Where's there closure.
First off, texting, while grievous stupidity, is far from hunting down a child for perverse acts and their eventual murder.
As for establishing a number, a quota, there is no worse way to subvert justice.
"
Oops, you are number 16,000. Sorry about that, but you will be an example to jaywalkers everywhere! "
Yep. That'll make 'em use the crosswalks.
You speak of 16,000 murders a year, but many (40% nationwide) of those will go unsolved. Hard to pronounce sentence on someone when you don't know who that is. The perpetrator may even have been the victim of a reprisal. In that sense, the death penalty may have been carried out unofficially, but that sort of vigilantism often breeds more reprisals, and leads to gang warfare, blood feuds, and the like. It is neither policy, nor official, but it adds to the body count while not showing up as either a solved crime nor a sentence fulfilled.
The percentage of unsolved murders varies by state, and here are the top ten for not getting their perpetrator.
(The full list is here:
http://www.unz.com/anepigone/rates-of-unsolved-murder-by-state/ )
State Unknown
1. District of Columbia 56.1%
2. Illinois 55.4%
3. Maryland 46.1%
4. New York 44.0%
5. California 43.9%
6. Massachusetts 43.8%
7. Rhode Island 42.0%
8. New Jersey 41.8%
9. Michigan 38.8%
10. Connecticut 37.1%
The percentages are the unsolved homicides.
Only one of those jurisdictions has the option of sentencing a convict to death.
For the number of murders by state, (2017) look here:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/195331/number-of-murders-in-the-us-by-state/(I am fortunate enough to live in a state with both few murders and very few unsolved ones. )
So, of the 16000 (national) homicides, fully 6400 go unsolved. That leaves 9600 homicides, many of which occur in non-death penalty states.
Comparing those few cases where the death penalty is invoked to the entire nation is sketchy logic at best.
Levying of the death penalty is something which should be done only after careful consideration of the individual case. As an effective deterrent, it is questionable, with the average time from sentencing to execution of 15 years, many (except the victims/victims relatives) have forgotten the crime, long lost in the short attention span news cycle.
But for those who remember, it will eat away at the lives of the survivors for that long and longer. The person whose innocence, mother, father, brother, sister, child, wife, husband, and/or friend they lost will be gone for the rest of their lives.