Fair enough, and fascinating. I guess I’m conflating first degree murder with “death penalty”. Please tell me nobody is pleading guilty and getting the death penalty.
There are also many cases of people waving their right to appeal once sentenced, which can cause challenges for their counsel (from the link: "Should a death-row inmate who wishes to waive his appeals be viewed as a client making a legal decision to accept the justness of his punishment, or as a person seeking the aid of the state in committing suicide?"): https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...
There are difficult issues everywhere you look with the death penalty. The one I can't understand how people get past is execution of the wrongfully convicted. Any justice system is flawed and makes mistakes - it's just too complicated to establish absolute truth when so many people with diverse motivations are involved in the process. We can save money by just putting them in prison until they die, giving us the option to partially undo the sentence in cases where innocence is later established.