Though I'm not advocating for the death penalty, it's high cost was created by the opponents of death penalty. I don't think "unfair" is the right word, but it sure is dirty.

Doesn’t high cost just mean there’s an extensive process in place to try to prevent killing innocent people (and yet it still happens). Not sure why that qualifies as “dirty” — wouldn’t killing without the process to save money be dirtier?

I think the parent was implying most of the extensive process is there in the first place because of the same opponents insisting on them.

Activists against the death penalty raise costs by frivolous litigation and then claim that the death penalty is too expensive. The same thing they've done with other things they don't like, e.g. nuclear power. It's circular logic.

No, proponents of the capital punishment attempt to create process that attempts to mitigate complaints made by abolishionists.

Nice attempt at shifting the goalposts and shifting blame. And making a false equivalence with nuclear power.

Abolishionists want capital punishment abolished because capital punishment is inhumane, cruel, and morally objectionable.

Agreed. It also means that the justice system cannot ever make a mistake unless one is ok with "legally killing" an innocent person.

Right, which I might be if it was one in a thousand or maybe even one in a hundred, but even with an insanely lengthy appeals process it's one in twenty or even higher. Not acceptable.

The expensive part is largely the (comparatively) exhaustive appeals process, which means counterintuitively the innocent may be even worse off now that they won't be on death row.

Here you probably mean the innocent wrongfully convicted, but I wonder how an exhaustive appeals process affects the innocent living victims and innocent family members of victims of a rightfully convicted criminal. That they’re forced to relive the trauma of passed crimes again and again every time the death sentence is appealed for over a decade in most cases. It cannot be good for them.

Much better for all involved to reopen a case if and when new evidence of wrongful convictions become convincing enough.