Well, yeah, kind of. You can pretty much trace all of that back to the people who did or didn't cast votes one way or the other. One faction carried the vote, and others didn't. On the matter of taxes, in my community we get to vote directly on a lot of them. Sometimes my side carries the vote, sometimes not.
Life is a gift and I’m not sure the very fallible state should be empowered to take it away from anyone.
Should fallible people have that power? Should fallible people have the right to chose cellmates?
My point is that death is pretty irreversible whereas a mistake resulting in a prison sentence could be made “right” with a big payment. I certainly shed no tears when Saddam Hussein was hanged.