Anti-Death-Penalty group releases report arguing that death penalty wastes money

[Jenna]

The Death Penalty Information Center study found that death penalty costs can average $10 million more per year per state than life sentences. Increased costs include higher security needs and guaranteed access to an often lengthy pardon and appellate process. The group is an information resource on capital punishment, and opposes its application as unworkable, inefficient and prone to mistakes.

Florida, where two men have been put to death this year, spends an average of $24 million per execution. That average has remained consistent since 2005, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Many death penalty proponents say part of the problem is that states have added unnecessary, time-consuming delays, and have been reluctant to carry out the death penalty that their own legislatures have enacted. They say states should carry out the wishes of judges and juries that weighed evidence and imposed death on the worst murderers.

Death penalty supporters acknowledge that states outside the South have been reluctant to impose the punishment, even in the face of rising big-city crime rates.

"I think we need to build support for the death penalty and need to impose it more regularly where it is warranted," Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Sacramento, California-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation told CNN earlier this year.

Having the death penalty can offer powerful incentives in plea bargaining, Scheidegger said, and could provide states with large savings in trial and incarceration costs.

His group conducted a study earlier this year comparing murder cases resolved by guilty plea with those that went to trial.

In states with the death penalty, the average county obtained sentences of at least 20 years in almost 51 percent of cases in which the defendant was charged with murder and convicted of murder or voluntary manslaughter. Those sentences were reached through a guilty plea in about 19 percent of the cases.

In states without the death penalty, sentences of at least 20 years were obtained in 40 percent of those cases, but only 5 percent were guilty pleas, about one-quarter of the number in the death penalty states.

More here: Study: States can't afford death penalty - CNN.com

[CTR man]

I'm sorry. IF you screw up bad enough, you need to go bye bye. Down into outer darkness or hell, whatever your persuasion is. The reason (in my opinion) why it is costing so much is that the criminals are allowed appeal after appeal after appeal. Then you get a state like mine that all of a sudden decided that the death penalty was unconstitutional or inhumane etc and commuted all pending sentences to LWOP. Charles Manson and his followers should have been offed along time ago. The same with Richard Ramirez aka the Night-stalker. Scott Peterson, Cary Stayner, Richard Allen Davis, cop killers like Columbus Allen and Bobby Davis (Newhall Incident), need to get the needle, gas chamber, etc and quit wasting our tax dollars on appeals and taking up space in our prisons and waiting util they die in prison of natural causes. Bobby Davis is already dead, Thank God, but he should have gone much sooner than he did. Even Mumia abu-Jamal, where ever the hell he is wasting away, probably Pennsylvania, needs to go. I'm sick and tired of the courts and others coddling major dirt-bags such as these.

[pgg]

I have a simple solution.... spend $0.05 on a .22 bullet, insert said bullet into the brain of scumbag. Scumbag dies. Make other prisoners bury his ass. I have now saved the state money, please give me back my taxes

[TXCharlie]

I have a simple solution.... spend $0.05 on a .22 bullet, insert said bullet into the brain of scumbag. Scumbag dies. Make other prisoners bury his ass. I have now saved the state money, please give me back my taxes

Not a bad solution, but I'd up that to a .308... Wouldn't want him to linger in Intensive Care for a week and run up those hospital bills.

Most of that money is spent on literally years of man-hours rung up by expensive lawyers fighting expensive prosecutors, both of which are paid for by taxpayers, usually.

[Odd]

Take a couple .22 shots. Would still be cheaper, no? Which would be the more green solution, the ever recyclable guillotine or a hemp rope?

That said, I'm against the death penalty. Haven't met an infallible person or encountered an error free creation of man yet. Enough about that.

[MonsterMash]

As Chris Rock said: "Stabbin don't cost a damn thing." Especially when you have plenty of red blooded Americans willing to donate knives to the cause. Hell, I've got about 3 spares I could give up. Hahaha

[CTR man]

I have a simple solution.... spend $0.05 on a .22 bullet, insert said bullet into the brain of scumbag. Scumbag dies. Make other prisoners bury his ass. I have now saved the state money, please give me back my taxes

Now, if there was a way that the prisoners could catch something like a disease or whatever off of the dead scumbag while burying him and then die themselves thus starting a chain reaction in the prison system. I would be all for that.

[mtaylor]

Take a couple .22 shots. Would still be cheaper, no? Which would be the more green solution, the ever recyclable guillotine or a hemp rope?

That said, I'm against the death penalty. Haven't met an infallible person or encountered an error free creation of man yet. Enough about that.

Read this and then say that the person that killed this little girl doesnt deserve the needle.
Sheriff: Landfill body appears to be Fla. girl - Yahoo! News