The Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that " meaningful appellate review was a prerequisite to any constitutionally acceptable scheme of capital punishment." There are myriad required hearings and appeals before an execution can take place. Those hearings and appeals often take years because of all the trials and hearings over evidence and the fact that the court systems are so backlogged.

All those appeals are important though.

As of June 2021, 33 of the men and women wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death since states resumed capital punishment in the 1970s had waited 20 or more years to be exonerated. Seventeen who were exonerated between 2010 and June 2021 had waited 25 years or more for their exonerations and, for twelve, exoneration took 30 years or more.

It is absolutely necessary to take all this time to make sure that the courts get it right. There’s no going back. If someone gets a life sentence and, three decades later, new evidence shows that they were not guilty, they can be released. If they’ve been executed, then an innocent person is dead and the guilty party will never be caught because no one will be looking for them because the authorities believe the crime to have been solved.

Even with all the mandatory trials and appeals, the courts still apparently get it wrong. I say apparently because the courts are notoriously reluctant to look into cases once someone has been executed. In many cases, it seems like the courts will strive to cover up even prosecutorial negligence or worse in order to protect their own reputation.

Bexar County District Attorney Susan Reed issued a report in 2007 finding that Ruben Cantu was guilty of the crime for which Texas executed him in 1993. However, critics have noted that Reed was formerly a judge who handled Cantu’s appeal and set his execution date, raising a conflict of interest in conducing an investigation of his guilt.

You are right, in my opinion, to oppose the death penalty. Despite all the effort to make sure the courts get it right, they still make mistakes and execute the wrong person, which means that the real criminal is still free and a threat to society. Also, because of all the mandatory hearings, DP cases are normally far more expensive to the tax payer than life sentences. Added security and special holding facilities and required hearings mean that death penalty cases end up costing 2.5 - 5 times more than life without parol.

For example:

To try to assess whether there are significantly different costs between these two penalties, researchers sent out surveys electronically to judges, prosecutors, public defenders and victim advocates in nine Pennsylvania judicial districts of varying population sizes and caseloads that had past or current capital murder cases. In its conclusion, the Task Force cited to a 2016 study of death penalty costs by The Reading Eagle (see below for more detail) which estimated that $272,000,000 had been spent per execution in Pennsylvania since 1978. The Task Force also found that post-conviction correctional costs were 47% higher on average in capital cases than non-capital cases, and that there is no evidence that ​“guilty pleas for capital murder cases offset the extra costs incurred and other resources consumed for capital cases that do not result in a guilty plea.”

Because the people are fighting for their lives. If they choose not to fight it all happens relatively fast.

If it takes that long it’s because the person is appealing it. A right that we thankfully still have.