Should be an America wide policy.
The death penalty doesn’t work. So, I’m perfectly OK with getting rid of it.
In principle, the death penalty is defensible. But in practice it’s arbitrary and capricious. On the other other hand, people have to guard all the felons, and that damages us too.
Thank you, Governor.
Well I think they claim that keeping someone in jail for decades is actually less expensive than the court and legal costs of someone fighting to keep from being executed is. Hard to imagine, but guess that’s why I’m not rich and a lawyer!
It probably is cheaper to keep people in prison forever rather than do the appeals thing. I was thinking of the human cost. If you’ve read descriptions of what it’s like to be a guard in a modern prison, it’s a thoroughly dispiriting, dehumanizing job, and the few people who take to it probably shouldn’t be encouraged. And I can’t imagine behavior is better for people who have no possibility of parole.
I’m one who has always felt that execution is morally justified for some crimes. The British, for ex, hanged nearly 200 concentration camp guards. Jolly good. However, we’ve known forever now that it is disproportionately visited on the poor, on blacks. and on those unconnected to society.
I used to have hopes our SCOTUS would some day find it unconstitutional. Fat chance of that.