White supremacist executed

[CollectorNC]

It actually costs taxpayers more when implementing the death penalty than it does a life sentence.

How? I costs a fortune a year per inmate to house them, feed them, and give them all the things they don't deserve.

 

[intothevoid]

I believe it's due to the legal costs of (everything comes back to legal costs ) all the appeals etc etc that the state has to fight before finallly being able to go through with the deed

 

[Darth Madden]

How? I costs a fortune a year per inmate to house them, feed them, and give them all the things they don't deserve.

Depending on how long their appeals last I bet it can cost more. Not only do they have to pay to keep him locked up but the 20+ years of court / lawyer / police cost to retry them can add up. This is why I am happy that sometimes (like a major case here in WA where a guy killed 4 cops in a coffee shop) they are not even taken alive. That 10 cent bullet from a cops gun at 2 AM during a standoff can really save a whole lot of mess.

 

[CollectorNC]

I believe it's due to the legal costs of (everything comes back to legal costs ) all the appeals etc etc that the state has to fight before finallly being able to go through with the deed

Yeah, I can see that and that could be rectified by limiting the appeals. It's ridiculous someone can sit on death row for over a decade.

 

[CollectorNC]

Depending on how long their appeals last I bet it can cost more. Not only do they have to pay to keep him locked up but the 20+ years of court / lawyer / police cost to retry them can add up. This is why I am happy that sometimes (like a major case here in WA where a guy killed 4 cops in a coffee shop) they are not even taken alive. That 10 cent bullet from a cops gun at 2 AM during a standoff can really save a whole lot of mess.

I wish more would shoot to kill.

 

[siquisiri]

I think this subject will always be controversial becasue it touches on issues of morality. In the western world, the USA is one of the few countries to still use the death penalty. From the standpoint of economics,most death row inmates are in jail for decades before theyre finally executed. It cost the states millions to keep them there and it costs more, due to legal costs.

 

[BadMoon]

I think this subject will always be controversial becasue it touches on issues of morality. In the western world, the USA is one of the few countries to still use the death penalty. From the standpoint of economics,most death row inmates are in jail for decades before theyre finally executed. It cost the states millions to keep them there and it costs more, due to legal costs.

Here's where I AGREE with some middle eastern policy. I think I remember them saying that if you get sentenced to die in Iraq it is carried out within 7 to 10 days. Good idea me thinks.

 

[Darth Caedus]

Old West Justice.....take him outside and shoot him

 

[Jen]

I'm torn when it comes to the death penalty, unless there is absolute proof that the person committed the crime/s. Which hasn't always been the case in the past and the thought that innocent people have most likely been executed does bother me.

I was watching some program on the death penalty and the interviewer recited some quote to a person - whether or not it was better to let 100 criminals free than execute one innocent. The person he was asking said she was ok if the ratio was 50/50. As long as half the people executed were guilty she was ok with 1/2 being innocent. I'm not ok with that.

I do agree with devilof76 that taxpayers should not have to foot this bill. There should be some way the incarcerated can work to pay off the costs to keep them in prison.

 

[galactiboy]

I'm gonna guess this thread will not last long, but since people are playing nice so far it can hang around.

I'm of two minds on the death penalty, I think in some cases it can be warranted but don't really have faith that our current system is reliable enough to justify an ultimate decision like that. Can't really say life in prison w/o the possiblity of parole is much better but it does seem that from a cost/risk benefit it is safer; here is one article of a few I saw that seem to support that point:

https://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29552692/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/t/execute-or-not-question-cost/#.TntlLexQhv8

I don't claim to know how biased or un-biased this article is, but generally it seems the cost to execute someone (which can take 5-20 years) is much more than to house a person in prison for the rest of their life. Guessing that it is due to legal fees and the fact they are locked in single cells in special areas with more resources directed towards them than a general inmate.

Kind of like the difference between private and public schools.

 

[CollectorNC]

I'm torn when it comes to the death penalty, unless there is absolute proof that the person committed the crime/s. Which hasn't always been the case in the past and the thought that innocent people have most likely been executed does bother me.

I was watching some program on the death penalty and the interviewer recited some quote to a person - whether or not it was better to let 100 criminals free than execute one innocent. The person he was asking said she was ok if the ratio was 50/50. As long as half the people executed were guilty she was ok with 1/2 being innocent. I'm not ok with that.

I do agree with devilof76 that taxpayers should not have to foot this bill. There should be some way the incarcerated can work to pay off the costs to keep them in prison.

I encourage all to read "Mockery of Justice" which is a non-fiction account of Sam Sheppard's wrongful imprisonment for the murder of his wife. (It was the basis of old "The Fugitive" tv series and subsequent movie and tv series.) He was a respected doctor who was accused of killing his pregnant wife, but there was all kinds of circumstantial evidenced allowed in to convict him. He was later acquitted, but was so ruined he killed himself. His son is an activist now against the death penalty, even though his father wasn't on death row to my knowledge. However, even after reading it and knowing that these errors and other errors are made in death penality cases, it's still not enough to make me think someone who is found guilty doesn't deserve what comes to them. Mainly because, for every innocent found guiltly, someone guilty (Anthony) gets off.

 

[user 1190]

I has been said many times in CA and other states the final cost of death penalty is higher then if they served life sentence. Frome everything I have heard is based on average age of death row inmate, average life expectancy , etc... So yeah a kid in jail for life at 18 could cost more but then what about the 60 year old who costs even less to have in jail for life.

Plus there is always the other cost saving, the other inmates. A lot of these guys unless they get segregated housing (which really is even a bigger punishment) they might not last long.

 

[devilof76]

I'm torn when it comes to the death penalty, unless there is absolute proof that the person committed the crime/s. Which hasn't always been the case in the past and the thought that innocent people have most likely been executed does bother me.

Me too. I haven't heard one take on the Troy Davis story that made me think he should have been executed, and it makes me nauseous.

I was watching some program on the death penalty and the interviewer recited some quote to a person - whether or not it was better to let 100 criminals free than execute one innocent.

100 criminals go free. Easy decision.

The person he was asking said she was ok if the ratio was 50/50. As long as half the people executed were guilty she was ok with 1/2 being innocent.

Would she like to be a member of the dead 50%, I wonder.

I do agree with devilof76

 

[Shatterer of Dreams]

I'm also split on this, I'm normally not for capital punishment for the reasons already covered by others here, but this guy definitely deserved it (though you always have to worry about groups like this using this guy as a martyer for their cause).

Now the guy in Georgia that got executed, that is a case with so many holes in it and is the perfect example of why we shouldn't execute people. There are FBI agents that looked at that case said he shouldn't be on deathrow because he probably didn't do it and so forth. But a cop died so all rational thought goes out the window.

 

[Jen]

I watched a documentary last weekend, called The Last Word, about a mentally challenged young man that was executed. The case against him was absolutely ridiculous. How anyone could have thought he was guilty was beyond me. It was a crooked DA, judges, lawyers and police force that wanted to quickly wrap up the case even though it was so painfully obvious this guy was innocent. It made me so damn furious.

It's stories like this that give me great doubts about capital punishment.

 

[Shatterer of Dreams]

Was that the case in Texas?

 

[Jen]

Was that the case in Texas?

Yep - about the nun that was murdered.

 

[Shatterer of Dreams]

I remember that. Quite the controversy back in the day. But Texas said F You to the rest of the country and executed that guy.

 

[Jen]

And now with DNA evidence - they have found the actual murderer....doesn't help this poor guy though.

 

[devilof76]

If there was an objective standard for conviction, and courts were to abide by it strictly, capital punishment would work. I don't trust the objectivity of this legal system as it is to support any capital conviction, other than on a case-by-case basis.

This man was guilty, and he deserved to die. If Troy Davis was guilty, I'm pretty sure nobody knows it. The cop's family couldn't come up with anything better than 'now his family knows how it feels' and 'now we can start the healing process', as if that was a fair substitute for proof. Disgusting.