Doesn’t Death Penalty Kill Defenseless People?

People who receive the death penalty are not simply defenseless people. They’re people who have been convicted of a capital crime(s) and are receiving a grave punishment for that grave crime(s). So the death penalty, going back to biblical times (Gen. 9:6; Rom. 13:4), is retributive justice for the grave wrongdoing a person has committed, not the unjust killing of a defenseless person as if that person has committed no grave wrongdoing.

For more on the death penalty, see these articles by Edward Feser, Tom Nash, Jimmy Akin, and Edward Peters.