Now there’s a good idea. They could get a job, pay their taxes, settle down, marry, have kids, go on vacations, lead the good life. That’ll teach them that crime doesn’t pay. Dylann Roof could even be forced, between vacations, to mow the lawns of the relatives of those he gunned down. Why, it’s win-win!
Except no-one is making that argument, so that comment is irrelevant.
I’m simply saying that arguments that assume the death penalty is cheaper than life in prison are far off the mark. The death penalty in the US is far more expensive every step of the way, starting with the process to empanel a jury and including the years spent on death row with special security.
Neither does killing the convict.
So might just as well kill the innocent person?!?
I’ve always thought that life in prison with no possibility of parole is more of a punishment than the death penalty.
This kid is 22-years-old, so barring the very real possibility of being murdered in prison, he’s looking at five or so decades of being caged.
Which is comparable to the amount of time some condemned prisoners have spent on death row:
• the longest serving prisoner on death row in the US, Gary Alford, spent almost 40 years on death row between his conviction in 1974 and his death from natural causes in 2013 at age 66;
• Viva Leroy Nash was 83 when he died of natural causes in 2010, the oldest prisoner on death row in the US, having been sentenced to death in 1983, 27 years earlier;
• Brandon Jones was likely the prisoner who served the longest time between sentence and actual execution, namely 36 years on death row from sentence in 1979 and execution in 2016, at age 73.
You know what would be even cheaper than that? Yep, nobody killing anyone in the first place. But that’s as unrealistic as your comment was.
As someone who has actually faced the very real possibility of trial after false charges against him, I’m going to say that the innocent folks would likely prefer to not get executed. What the state can do, though, once it’s determined that there was a miscarriage of justice and that the incarcerated person is, in fact, innocent, is to release that person and to compensate them for their time behind bars.
But, hey, it’s all good that someone, anyone basically, got killed for committing a horrendous crime, a crime so horrible that the body politic just collectively lost its mind and decided that a killin’ had to happen so society could shoot its load and call it justice, right?
I’m against the death penalty, but for some people you just have to make an exception.
So why is that piece of shit still breathing?
That means you are in favour of the death penalty, in certain cases.
That’s me also. And this is one of the few cases I am very comfortable with the death penalty.
Yes. it would seem so. Is it inconsistent? Yes it is. I admit it.