John Milton, Paradise Lost. If you think George Lucas could write something liek that, youv'e never watched Star Wars in English.

From the book of Romans:

12:17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil; consider what is good before all people. 18 If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all people. 19 Do not avenge yourselves, dear friends, but give place to God’s wrath, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. 20 Rather, if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in doing this you will be heaping burning coals on his head. 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Court appeals happen without the death penalty, too. Even assuming that a person sentenced to life only lives ten years logner in prison than does someone on death row (this is not the case), you also have to factor in increased cost of care as a person ages - once you hit your mid forties, you become a lot harder to take care of. Execution would have to be enormously, egregiously expensive in order to outweigh how huge the cost of holding a prisoner for the course of his life is.

That's if you believe in a God that will take out your revenge for you. And it still acknowledges revenge as something rightful (in the end).

But if you don't believe in God you need to have the state to deal out the revenge instead.

There's a great deal more deliberation (and often many more appeals) when it's a capital case, though. In North Carolina, it costs something like $2.5 million just to bring about such a case. A Duke University study from '93 put the total cost of execution at $163,000 more than a 20 year stretch in the slammer; if it's like everything else, that discrepancy has probably grown rather than shrunk over the last 17 years.

Very interesting, though that 20 year stretch in the slammer is not the same as a literal life sentence (which I believe was the point of contention), which can last for three or four decades.

That's true. I've not found anything else comparably academic on more extended prison stays, just stuff that looks suspiciously like anti-death penalty propaganda. Either way, the savings from killing someone vs. feeding and housing them for a few decades clearly aren't what they'd seem at first blush.