Another problem concerning the death penalty is that it, like other criminal offenses, is related to poverty. Most of the people on death row are poor, partly because higher crime rates come with poverty, but also because poorer people can't afford qualified lawyers.
I would have to disagree. Even in the direst times, there is no reason to resort to killing an innocent person. Now, if you were to say (and I don't have any data to verify this) that highest percentage of a demographic on death row were gang members, you can draw a correlation between poor people belonging to gangs, and are then more prone to commit violent acts.