Quote:
Originally Posted by cheerfulgreek
Kevin, I agree with you sort of. What if it's a serial killer who's been proven guilty? You don't think he/she should be put to death?
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Should he be? Sure... he probably ought to be thrown to the lions or committed to some other sort of cruel sort of punishment.
But what you're talking about when you're talking about putting a man to death are thousands of man-hours of appeals both in terms of lawyers' time and judges' time. Time that IMHO, would be better spent elsewhere.
You're also talking about separate holding facilities, actual costs of executions, etc.
It's far cheaper to keep these prisoners for life than it is to put them to death because of all of these costs surrounding the death penalty. It's not like it has any redeeming qualities like preventing further homicides, etc.
My father's stepfather sat on the Oklahoma Criminal Court of Appeals (the state's final appellate court for criminal cases). He once opined that the one thing he knew about the death penalty is that once it's administered, the recidivism rate was zero. Perhaps there's something to that, but as far as I can tell, its' just not worth it.