>>>http://money.cnn.com/2011/06/20/news/economy/california_death_penalty/index.htm?hpt=hp_t2
>>>
>>>$4 billion since 1978 on California's capital punishment system + only 13 executions =t $308 million per execution. Wow.
>>
>>As you may know I'm a liberal in most things but the death penalty is one I support. I hate the idea of paying tax dollars to support the worst mass murderers or terrorists in prison. I wouldn't want to support Timothy McVeigh in prison, would you? Or Osama Bin Ladin? And nowadays regular murderers (with robbery,rape,etc *not crimes of passion) seem to only get 5-15 years sentences!? What happened to the good old days when murder would get you the chair?? The bottom line is that if they did this efficiently without a lot of legal wrangling it wouldn't cost as much. But i don't know if that's possible.
>
>The legal wrangling is exactly the point. When you take the cost of prosecution and appeals into account, it costs more to execute a man than to imprison him for the rest of his life. That is not my primary view of capital punishment (actually I am against it because I think it's barbaric) but the economic argument doesn't hold water.

Then save it for the high profile cases where there's irrefutable evidence. I don't want the BTK serial killer feeling like he got away with it because he's living the rest of his life in prison on taxpayer's dollars (segregated away from the rest of the prison population for his own safety!) or Timothy McVeigh spending the rest of his life in prison getting converts to his wacked right-ring philosophy of violence. Do you? Do you want an Osama Bin Laden in prison just to be some sort of martyr and build his following???