Do you have some other criteria for imprison-for-life or don't imprison for life?
Just things that are typically used for sentencing. Background, severity of the crime, state of the victim. Aggravating and mitigating factors.
If stealing is wrong, and using wrong-acts as punishments also wrong, then traffic fines are wrong.
Except the difference here is not an eye for an eye mentality that we see in the death penalty, which is specifically why I used theft as an example. Personally, I think fines are pretty dumb forms of punishment because they are primarily used to get money for the county and they don't do much except for put financial hardship on people and make them more likely to commit more crimes. But still, we seem to hold physical crimes against other people in a special place of severity. Battery, domestic battery, rape, and murder all carry pretty severe consequences but the government doesn't batter you as a punishment if you batter another. It doesn't rape you if you raped someone.
Depends. What's the penalty for getting high?
There's no punishment for getting high. Only possession and even that is getting cut from the books.
Those trivial variations are overwhelmed by much firmer support in much larger countries like the US and Germany.
Except Germany overwhelmingly does not support the death penatly. And I appreciate you taking the time to put together a spreadsheet (I've never actually known how to make it do stuff) but even you can't honestly say that is a complete or accurate depiction of the world's opinion. For starters, you list Australia as supporting the death penalty, which it overwhelmingly does not. You also list Canada as supporting the death penalty, which is does not. Second, I am aware of a staggering amount of countries which are not on that list. Now, if you want to say that I'm a minority in the US (which you didn't include), that's fine. I won't disagree with you, but I will note that evidence shows that majority is dwindling. In fact, we're seeing a downward trend of support in many countries.
Locking violent people up... on an asteroid, away from guards and other prisoners, where escape is impossible?
Haha, no. I don't imagine we will see anything like the Lunar Max prison from MIB3. But, and all I could find was outdated information, prison escapes are very unlikely and extremely rare. It's not like sending a violant person to prison means that they might escape. Sending them there overwhelmingly means that they stay there.
The death penalty should be reserved for people whose crimes mark them as irredeemable
But whose standard of irredeemable are we using? Either way you're only sending a message that killing people is okay.
rehabilitative one for the law-breaking
Yeah, rehabilitation is great but you can't achieve that with the death penalty. It sadly, doesn't seem like we're doing a good job of that with our current system. That aside, we do get some very messed up people now and then and the I think the best way to demonstrate that they have absolutely no place in our society is to avoid their behavior and just lock them away forever.
Judges should uphold the law, but the law is whatever judges uphold.
Yeah, the law and its application are very subjective. But Justice is even further out of our reach. We can't agree on what Justice is. How can we expect our legal system to be any better? Whose idea of Justice do we enforce?