The death penalty is actually more expensive than not having it, rubang is right. The amount of money the state has to spend while the defendant uses all his appeals (which if you are against then you should look at the amount of murder cases that have been thrown out after a person has been executed based on forensic evidence showing they were innocent) is pretty high in terms of what it costs them to put on their case. Not to mention its constitutionally guaranteed through the Due Process clause that they can exercise whatever means available through the law.
I mean look at the Constitution, do you see any provisions making it EASIER to convict people of crimes? No, and there are at least 10 different instances where the Founding Fathers expressly made it HARDER to convict people of crimes. They were hostile towards law enforcement because they themselves had been abused by that very type of authority.
So from a practical standpoint, the death penalty isn't even that efficient. However, it is true that there are some people out there who are so utterly insane that they should never be released back into society. I'm kind of torn on whether or not we should be able to kill them. I'm still neutral on the issue, though if I was on a jury I would probably have a hard time condemning someone to death.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
