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Convicted murderer takes 34 minutes to die during execution.


Snowguy716

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I don't think they should "stay legal" but I also think you have to take the numbers out and look at how the affect people. You also have to count for how many people live normal lives with tobacco addictions, and how many people with drug additions don't.... ps ( don't talk about drinknig right now :shades: )
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I'll probably get flamed for the rest of my life on this. But why should I waste my tax dollars on the upkeep of a convicted murderer/ cerial killer/ rapist/ pedaphile thug. What good is a deranged criminal that sits behind bars for the rest of his life? The answer is nothing. Anybody that murders in cold blood is no good to society and just as we do to wild and out of control dogs, any thug like that should be put down.
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These numbers are just "spin" to help further the anti-death penalty arguement. Let's not forget the average cost of a cell for a prisoner can run from $24-$75K a year. Other needs for the prisoner can greatly inflate these costs, and if the convicted murderer is young, say 18-20, he could be in the system for 50-60 years as these costs increase. So the money figures mean nothing to me in this argument.

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These numbers are just "spin" to help further the anti-death penalty arguement. Let's not forget the average cost of a cell for a prisoner can run from $24-$75K a year. Other needs for the prisoner can greatly inflate these costs, and if the convicted murderer is young, say 18-20, he could be in the system for 50-60 years as these costs increase. So the money figures mean nothing to me in this argument.
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But...How much would housing a convicted Murderer in a prison cell for the rest of his / her life cost? Food. Medical Care. Hygiene needs. Etc. It all adds up. If I remember my data correctly I could get a college education for what it costs to imprison a convicted criminal for one year. A convict serving a life sentence will be behind bars for the rest of his / her life. That means if a convicted Murderer was 20 years old, he would be in prison for another sixty years before dying. So the costs would come out to around 2 million dollars matching NC's 2 mill per execution.

Costs aside, why as a society should we keep cold-blooded murderers/ rapist/ pedophiles alive? The main answer from anti-death penalty advocates that I'm hearing is for humane purposes. That to me is politically correct B.S. Nothing more. Is shooting an innocent person humane? Is straggling a little girl to death humane? How about those spineless cowards that mow down school children with automatics or the crack job that murders his pregnant wife and toss her in a river for the sake of collecting insurance money? Oh and lets not forget those pedophiles out there that whisk children into there vans and do all sorts of unspeakable and repulsive things to them and leaves there cold dead bodies out in the woods. No these cold-blooded thugs are not humane. They are scum that has wasted their gift of life on doing their evil acts. So I see absolutely no point in keeping them alive.

Don't get me wrong. I am a forgiving and compassionate person. But things like cold-blooded murder, rape, and pedophilia are things I do not nor shall ever forgive. Thus I believe that the sub-human scum that commit such deplorable acts should be answered with swift and sever punishment and made an example of no matter the costs.

This is a very common misconception, and often used as a "common sense" reason to execute convicted criminals instead of keeping them incarcerated. Unfortunately for them, it doesn't hold water.

A few examples:

North Carolina spends more per execution than on a non-death penalty murder case

The most comprehensive death penalty study in the country found that the death penalty costs North Carolina $2.16 million more per execution than the a non-death penalty murder case with a sentence of life imprisonment (Duke University, May 1993). On a national basis, these figures translate to an extra cost of over $1 billion spent since 1976 on the death penalty.

Death penalty trials very costly relative to county budgets

Capital cases burden county budgets with large unexpected costs, according to a report released by the National Bureau of Economic Research, "The Budgetary Repercussions of Capital Convictions," by Katherine Baicker. Counties manage these high costs by decreasing funding for highways and police and by increasing taxes. The report estimates that between 1982-1997 the extra cost of capital trials was $1.6 billion. (NBER Working Paper No. w8382, Issued in July 2001)

Texas death penalty cases cost more than non-capital cases

That is about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years. (Dallas Morning News, March 8, 1992)

California spends millions more on capital cases

California spends $90 Million dollars annually above and beyond the ordinary costs of the justice system on capital cases. $78 million of that total is incurred at the trial level (Sacramento Bee, March 18, 1988). In January 2003, despite a budge deficit, California Governor Gray Davis proposed building a new $220 million state of the art death row. (New York Times, January 14, 2003)

Suggested reading: www.deathpenaltyinfo.org

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Facts: 1) Nicotine is more addictive than cocaine and heroin. 2) Alcohol is involved in more violence and family problems than other drugs. 3) The middle class uses the most (number wise) of the illegal hardcore drugs and they lead productive lives. 4) Tobacco causes nearly a million deaths annually. There are more...

So, we should tax the hell out of these drugs and use that money to fund efforts for abuse recovery and medical care. That way, only the abusers pay the cost and the underground economy, which has killed many of our cities, collapses. Right now, we pay the cost of the war on drugs, the cost of problems derived from prohibition, and the human cost, and financial cost, of having people locked away for non-violent crimes.

All of this is coming from someone who has never drank, or smoked.

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As a prior poster mentioned, this quickly brings to mind the grisly execution scene in The Green Mile. The incompetence of the prison that let that happen is shocking, and the one(s) responsible should be reprimanded harshly.

I'm ambivalent about the death penalty.

I hate the fact that the US shares the distinction of being an executing nation with horrible dictatorships like Saudi Arabia, China and the Sudan. I also hate the fact that almost all developed democracies in the world abolished the death penalty years ago, except the States. Puts us in terrible company.

But I also hate the thought of wasting millions of dollars of taxpayers' money imprisoning hopeless monsters like Charles Manson and Squeaky Fromme. They are lower than scum, and they'll never change their psychopathic ideation. I would hate to hear how much money it has cost to imprison those two sociopaths for all these decades.

So there are so many pros and cons that I have trouble deciding how I ultimately feel about the death penalty. I wonder how many other people are torn by this question. Nevertheless, I feel it's high time to revisit the issue. It's been quite a while since the US Supreme Court reopened the door to executions.

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^ We may be fairly lonely as a democratic 1st world nation to still have the death penalty, but I don't think we are comparable to other nations in this category because they have virtually no violent crime compared to the US. And the death penalty is not why we have high crime, lets get serious here (think I read that earlier in the thread).

Regarding the higher costs for prisoners condemned to death pointed out earlier, this is fallacy in linking cause to effect - they cost more because the average death row inmate will not be executed for 15 years or more. That is a different issue, and in and of itself is not caused by simply having a death penalty.

The death penalty, IMO, is not a deterrent because we don't really have a death penalty. If one can delay it for decades, or in all but the most grevious cases of crime not even receive it as a sentence in the first place, then why should anyone fear it? Leaving the courtroom and heading straight to the public square for execution would be a deterrant like you couldn't imagine. I am not arguing in favor of that by the way, just that we don't really have a death penalty, that anything done half-assed never works.

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If after attempting to gun down President Ford in cold blood, Squeaky Fromme had been tried and executed after the first appeal, I wonder if that would have indeed made a difference in the way American criminals think.

Criminals of the murdering type are usually so depraved that sanctions are meaningless to them. So even if Squeaky had fried in an electric chair on national TV for her crime, it's debateable whether a similar minded criminal would be deterred from carrying out a similar act.

The death penalty is a question that probably won't be answered in the States for quite a while.

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If after attempting to gun down President Ford in cold blood, Squeaky Fromme had been tried and executed after the first appeal, I wonder if that would have indeed made a difference in the way American criminals think.

Criminals of the murdering type are usually so depraved that sanctions are meaningless to them. So even if Squeaky had fried in an electric chair on national TV for her crime, it's debateable whether a similar minded criminal would be deterred from carrying out a similar act.

The death penalty is a question that probably won't be answered in the States for quite a while.

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But...How much would housing a convicted Murderer in a prison cell for the rest of his / her life cost? Food. Medical Care. Hygiene needs. Etc. It all adds up. If I remember my data correctly I could get a college education for what it costs to imprison a convicted criminal for one year. A convict serving a life sentence will be behind bars for the rest of his / her life. That means if a convicted Murderer was 20 years old, he would be in prison for another sixty years before dying. So the costs would come out to around 2 million dollars matching NC's 2 mill per execution.

Costs aside, why as a society should we keep cold-blooded murderers/ rapist/ pedophiles alive? The main answer from anti-death penalty advocates that I'm hearing is for humane purposes. That to me is politically correct B.S. Nothing more. Is shooting an innocent person humane? Is straggling a little girl to death humane? How about those spineless cowards that mow down school children with automatics or the crack job that murders his pregnant wife and toss her in a river for the sake of collecting insurance money? Oh and lets not forget those pedophiles out there that whisk children into there vans and do all sorts of unspeakable and repulsive things to them and leaves there cold dead bodies out in the woods. No these cold-blooded thugs are not humane. They are scum that has wasted their gift of life on doing their evil acts. So I see absolutely no point in keeping them alive.

Don't get me wrong. I am a forgiving and compassionate person. But things like cold-blooded murder, rape, and pedophilia are things I do not nor shall ever forgive. Thus I believe that the sub-human scum that commit such deplorable acts should be answered with swift and sever punishment and made an example of no matter the costs.

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After doing some pondering, your points are valid about the costs of trying death penalty cases as they can get very expensive. The same is said with any type of high profile case. Thus it is the data your've presented that frosts me because that data among other things are what turns our judicial system into a pointless revolving door for the criminals while leaving the victims high and dry.

Your figures are a little rough, aren't they?

I don't mean for this to turn into a debate about the death penalty. I was simply pointing out that in many if not most cases, it costs more to execute someone than to keep them alive in jail. But since you want to pursue it, I'll play along.

Trials, believe it or not, are where the bulk of the costs come from - not the healthcare, not the prison food. Trials and their trial-related preparations (jury selection, expert witnesses) in which the death penalty applies cost more regardless of the outcome of the trial. Just having the option of the death penatly on the table makes the trial more expensive. There are more pre-trial motions, more questioning of jurors and their views on capital punishment, post-trial motions, countless appeals, clemency proceedings, the list goes on. And all of that takes more time, and we all know the saying, "time is money."

What a lot of people don't realize is the true cost of the death penalty includes all the trials in which the death penalty is available but not achieved. When someone is convicted and the death penalty is an option, but they end up getting life in prison instead, the money's already spent as it would be in a death penalty trial. You don't get a refund.

You say "deplorable acts" should be met with swift and severe punishment. Most convicts sentenced to death spend about a decade waiting to die. It's not like they're cuffed one day, sentenced the next and hanged an hour later.

"Life without parole could save millions of dollars. It's cheaper to lock 'em up and throw away the key." - Former Texas Attorney General Jim Mattox

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After doing some pondering, your points are valid about the costs of trying death penalty cases as they can get very expensive. The same is said with any type of high profile case. Thus it is the data your've presented that frosts me because that data among other things are what turns our judicial system into a pointless revolving door for the criminals while leaving the victims high and dry.
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that's why death penalty cases cost a lot more. the criminals sit on death row for so long because of drawn out trials and appeals and sentencing. the government doesn't want to put anyone to death because if new evidence is found that proves the guy who was killed was actually innocent, they're screwed. that's the biggest reason i'm against the death penalty. a good lawyer can make anyone look guilty or innocent if the evidence isn't the best but can be twisted.
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