On the one hand, many people who oppose the death penalty, myself included, agree that even in a situation where we know that a person committed a crime with the kind of absolute certainty that’s only possible in thought experiments, we would still oppose the death penalty.

On the other hand, it’s not an unnecessary complication, because that’s one thing that sways some people to this side of the debate–we don’t live in a thought experiment, so we can never be absolutely certain that the person being killed actually committed the crime they’re accused of. We can come pretty damn close–I challenge you to find someone who believe Dennis Rader or Darrell Brooks is innocent–but as long as we’re executing them, we’ll be executing Cameron Todd Willinghams and Walter Bartons and Carlton Micheal Garys. It just isn’t worth it. Let them rot in prison, and if evidence comes out that they didn’t actually commit the crime, release them.