It’s far too easy to look at capital punishment the absolute wrong way. Too often, liberals choose to side with murderers and sexual predators rather than give the American people and Constitution their fair say.

Most, if not all, capital punishment proponents prefer to reserve such a punishment for only the most heinous of crimes, where there is not a sliver of doubt about the murderer’s innocence. Yes, DNA evidence has exonerated a couple of people on death row over the years, but the fact that it is reported speaks to its rarity. Further, the introduction of such DNA evidence is further insurance against false convictions today.

Challenge any anti-capital punishment activist to say that these people should not be put to death: Robert Glen Coe, who abducted, raped and murdered Cary Ann Medlin, an eight year-old girl who pleadingly implored “Jesus loves you” to her murderer right up to her death; Peter Cantu, Efrain Perez, Derrick Sean O’Brien, Joe Medellin and Raul Villereal, who gang-raped two teenage girls, then choked them to death with their own shoelaces; and Timothy Carr, who cut, stabbed and bludgeoned with a baseball bat the face of a Georgia teenager. These are not isolated incidences of particularly heinous capital cases—they are a refl ection of just how bad a crime has to be to merit the pursuit of the death penalty.

A 2005 Gallup poll found that a whopping 64 percent of Americans support capital punishment. We must avoid falling into the trap of thinking that just because a vocal liberal minority cries out against the system, their voice represents that of the American people. It’s not just Republicans supporting it, though—58 percent of people identifying themselves as Democrats do, as well.

A recent Bureau of Justice Statistics prisoner survey found that about one in 12 prisoners had a prior murder conviction. A murderer executed has a zero percent chance of being a repeat offender. Were the death penalty unconstitutional, the Supreme Court would have grated a stay to all prisoners on death row. No punishment will ever bring back a life, but the death penalty seems to be as close as we can get to real justice.