Pittsburgh Synagogue shooter to get death penalty ...

[DeusxMac]

Lemon Drop wrote:
[quote=DeusxMac]
[quote=Lemon Drop]
...you only need to look at recent problems with Alabama's lethal injection executions, or botched executions, to see why we need to end this practice and join the civilized world.

Much (most?) of those issues are self-fulfilling.

"...it cost the Texas Department of Criminal Justice $83.55 for the drugs used to carry out an execution -- sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride.

Then last March [2011] the state was forced to replace sodium thiopental with pentobarbital after the U.S. supplier of the former drug halted distribution amid international protests.

Switching to pentobarbital, also known as Nembutal, raised the cost of drugs for each execution to $1,286.86."

"Some of the reasons for the high cost of the death penalty are the longer trials and appeals required when a person’s life is on the line, the need for more lawyers and experts on both sides of the case"

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make.
Acquiring the drugs for lethal injection is not the recent problem in Alabama.
The more broad point is that the “reasons” for the death penalty being more costly than incarceration are the impediments created by those opposing it. They call out the financial costs to support their cause, but those costs are of their own making; it is an applied tactic.

[Lemon Drop]

DeusxMac wrote:
[quote=Lemon Drop]
[quote=DeusxMac]
[quote=Lemon Drop]
...you only need to look at recent problems with Alabama's lethal injection executions, or botched executions, to see why we need to end this practice and join the civilized world.

Much (most?) of those issues are self-fulfilling.

"...it cost the Texas Department of Criminal Justice $83.55 for the drugs used to carry out an execution -- sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride.

Then last March [2011] the state was forced to replace sodium thiopental with pentobarbital after the U.S. supplier of the former drug halted distribution amid international protests.

Switching to pentobarbital, also known as Nembutal, raised the cost of drugs for each execution to $1,286.86."

"Some of the reasons for the high cost of the death penalty are the longer trials and appeals required when a person’s life is on the line, the need for more lawyers and experts on both sides of the case"

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make.
Acquiring the drugs for lethal injection is not the recent problem in Alabama.
The more broad point is that the “reasons” for the death penalty being more costly than incarceration are the impediments created by those opposing it. They call out the financial costs to support their cause, but those costs are of their own making; it is an applied tactic.
The problems in Alabama have nothing to do with cost.

I really do not care about the "cost" of either option. There is a higher cost to American society in continuing to engage in this barbaric, racist practice. There is a reason that most states still killing people are the former slave dates.

I also think it's a ridiculous assertion that death penalty opponents try to prevent executions to run up the cost?

We do all we can to prevent executions because we believe this is wrong.

[Fritz]

while the basis of what Lemon Drop refers to, the barbaric death penalty, I'd agree with.
But ...
The murderer is white. The murderer killed 11 people witnessed by many.
The murderer serves no further purpose to society.
Rabid dogs are killed in many if not most states.
This is a rabid dog.

If that seems uncivilized for a modern western society and leader of western civilization, I'd agree.

But the western nation, in spite of its' many flaws, did not murder a one of those 11 murdered.
Inadequate and antiquated gun laws certainly helped.
I didn't and wouldn't vote to support the freedom of the trigger that this country supports.

[DeusxMac]

Lemon Drop wrote:
I really do not care about the "cost" of either option.

You may not care, but the "expense" of capital punishment is a common, recurring argument against it.

"The death penalty is quite expensive and life imprisonment can be cheaper. Over the lifetime of a case, executing prisoners can be three times as expensive as life in prison, primarily due to the higher costs of capital punishment trials, automatic appeals, and the heightened security on death row with lower staff-to-prisoner ratios."

"We pay many millions for the death penalty system."

"The death penalty is a waste of taxpayer funds and has no public safety benefit."

"In the USA capital punishment costs a great deal.

For example, the cost of convicting and executing Timothy McVeigh for the Oklahoma City Bombing was over $13 million.

In New York and New Jersey, the high costs of capital punishment were one factor in those states' decisions to abandon the death penalty."

Lemon Drop wrote: I also think it's a ridiculous assertion that death penalty opponents try to prevent executions to run up the cost?

We do all we can to prevent executions because we believe this is wrong.

I would hope you could see the contradiction in your two sentences above;
"We do all we can to prevent executions...",
"it's a ridiculous assertion that death penalty opponents try to prevent executions to run up the cost"

[Lemon Drop]

No, I do not see those sentences as contradictory.

And I am aware of the cost argument, as I'm sure everyone on MRF is. Justice is expensive. Letting people have their rights under the Constitution is not cheap, in any sense.

"Much (most?) of those issues are self-fulfilling."


I read this as a suggestion that death penalty opponents take steps simply to increase the cost to the government of carrying out the death pemalty. I've never seen evidence of that.

The steps are intended to block scheduled executions, postpone pending ones, and to emd the practice altogether.
Cost? It costs a lot to fight the death penalty, that cost is born by volunteers and professionals who give their own time and resources. Willingly.

States continue this practice at their own risk where fiancial cost is concerned.