I'd perhaps have thought death sentencing is more a deterrent than jailing for life, because jails are rather cushy these days, since they are obliged to fit in with human rights and all. And often life sentences are in fact cut short for various reasons, such as 'good behaviour' or any excuse to get them out of the jail to fit more people in (so as was said, life sentence practically DOES only mean 15-20 years). But death penalties have problems, such as if a proposed 'murderer' is killed, and the real one is caught or gives themselves up, then someone else's life has totally unlawfully been ended. These cases of misidentification still happen with our supposedly advanced age and tech. This is why death row exists, but then they go for trial as their human rights allow since they have nothing to lose, and their substantial food and living quarters are being paid for until they are executed, also.
Also, financial related crimes tend to get much worse sentences than anything like rape, abuse etc. because in our society, money is worth more than a human life, and through the history of society that is how our law has developed, to keep the wealth of the people with lots of it under their posession, and to brutally punish anyone who tries to take it and thus deterr others. These rich people can easily escape prison themselves and likely win any legal battle against someone of lower class, so they can avoid such rape etc., while if the lower classes do that to each other, the rich don't care. Maybe it's not a 'conscious' thing each individual wealthy person thinks per-se, but that does appear to be the case, hence the term "posession is nine-tenths of the law".
It doesn't help that each case on often have vastly varying reasons, and so a death sentence might not always be fair, even if two separate people have murdered two each for vastly different reasons.
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