Thats a fallacy.

If you want to work numbers, then how about the guys who broke out a few years ago and killed a security guard. The death penalty would have saved him, why is his life less valuable than the person who got inoccently convicted?

The arguement that it costs to much to go through the process of the death penalty, your arguement is for streamlining the system. Radical anti death penalty advocates abuse that system and THAT should be stopped.

Justice is also another reason for the death penalty, NOT REVENGE, they are different.

A society makes a statement on what it values by how it punishes people for various acts. Lets say we only give two years for ANY murder, then we are saying we dont really value life that much, and we value it less than a car if stealing a car gets you five years.

Regarding the killing a cop thing, it is also pretty much recognized that a guy who is willing to kill a cop has really gone over the line and is extremely violent and more likely to kill anyone anytime, more of a danger to society.

Bots also hit it, when you have life w/o parole, then he can murder anyone in prison he wants to without any punishment, since he has already hit his punishment limit.

One that really cracks me up is those who say the death penalty is cruel and unusual, then they will also say, besides, life in prison is probably worse than the death penalty, hmmmm, so, life in prison is worse, but you wont give the death penalty cuz its soo bad?

Lastly, one thing very few people think about. Those who are guards in the prisons that house the "worst of the worst" , it winds up taking a toll on their lifes. Emotionally it ruins many of them, after some time, it wears them down having to deal with these people, they go home with images running through their heads of all the crap that constantly goes on inside. I saw a program of an institution that houses such criminals, and when interviewed, the guards there all wind up becoming depressed.

Im wondering, the guy in San Diego, a few years ago they caught him, and had so much evidence there is no way he wasnt guilty, he kidnapped, tortured, raped and murdered a seven year old girl, does he deserve to live?

me cast my vote, NOT

I'd hate to be a prison guard, especially in units where certifiable scum of the earth are housed.

I have a wild idea, and I'm not alone, to bring back prison islands. Apparently, there is a fair number of islands around the world that can support life that are uninhabited.

How about you drop a bunch of these guy on one, give 'em hoes and shovels and seeds, and let 'em go. It's almost cerainly never going to happen -- having an inpenetrable patrol around the island 24/7 might be impossible and if a family of yachting tourists happened on the island like happened in one of the Jurassic Park movies - where the little girl almost got eaten by small dinosaurs - oh man, it would be ugly.

Still, it's an appealing thought -- no guards would ever have to have their minds soiled by those miscreants and the a**holes could have a chance at some sort of rehab, if they didn't kill each other first.

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Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

I don't think that's a bad idea.

I first got wind of the idea in a column by Jon Carroll, he's an SF Chron regular. He had a book that listed many of the inhabitable but uninhabited islands in the world. It would be a lot more humane in many ways than what we're doing now.

I think maybe it's ultimately not doable. Well, maybe for the life with no parole crowd, but even with that limited group, the numbers might be so large that it would be hard to find enough islands that could be used that wouldn't prompt a humongous outpouring of objection by all sorts of concerned parties.

And if a family of yachters did land on it, if they missed the off limits status, oh my ghod, there would be the hostage standoff from hell. The state dept. of whatever country they were from would be under enormous pressure.

It's nice to think about anyway, I mean, not the hostage deal, but a way to get these guys away from civilized society -- including guards.

__________________
Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

The island would still have to be monitored. Whats to stop these bastards from organizing building a sea worthy craft and getting off the island (Can you say Kurt Russell )
What made Australia so viable in this regard was its distance from "civilization" way back then. How far are these modern deserted islands he writes about from current civilization?

Yeah, you're right. There's no way you could just leave them there and hope for the best.

I never saw the book and he didn't elaborate on how far some of the islands were away from everything else. The best scenario would be if one was relatively close to another island so the guards could have somewhere to live. The whole idea is probably impossible. If the island was too far away from everything else, getting people to work the monitoring detail would be tough and expensive. If it was close to civilization, the island would be in demand for other uses.

Bottom line, you'd need to have lookouts 24/7 that could see all sides of the island to prevent escape or accidental landing by innocents, especially females, who would be set upon with ferocity, no doubt.

__________________
Te futueo et caballum tuum

1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

$ Kansas Study Concludes Death Penalty is Costly Policy
In its review of death penalty expenses, the State of Kansas concluded that capital cases are 70% more expensive than comparable non-death penalty cases. The study counted death penalty case costs through to execution and found that the median death penalty case costs $1.26 million. Non-death penalty cases were counted through to the end of incarceration and were found to have a median cost of $740,000. For death penalty cases, the pre-trial and trial level expenses were the most expensive part, 49% of the total cost. The costs of appeals were 29% of the total expense, and the incarceration and execution costs accounted for the remaining 22%. In comparison to non-death penalty cases, the following findings were revealed:

* The investigation costs for death-sentence cases were about 3 times greater than for non-death cases.
* The trial costs for death cases were about 16 times greater than for non-death cases ($508,000 for death case; $32,000 for non-death case).
* The appeal costs for death cases were 21 times greater.
* The costs of carrying out (i.e. incarceration and/or execution) a death sentence were about half the costs of carrying out a non-death sentence in a comparable case.
* Trials involving a death sentence averaged 34 days, including jury selection; non-death trials averaged about 9 days.

I was just cuttin and pastin.

Now I get it.

I like that idea.......post it off limits and any idiots in a yacht that stop there deserve whatever happens to them.

__________________
Proud owner of ....
1971 280SE W108
1979 300SD W116
1983 300D W123
1975 Ironhead Sportster chopper
1987 GMC 3/4 ton 4X4 Diesel
1989 Honda Civic (Heavily modified)
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Section 609 MVAC Certified
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"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

I was talking to a colleague who heard a former warden of Angola State Pen (max security prison in Louisiana. Has a fence and outside of it, the second biggest swamp in North America and then the largest river in North America). The talk was on river mgmt and levee maintenance.

So there was this big flood and they asked how much time they would have if the levee was breached before the whole area was under water. Answer, about a half-day. They decided that they would have to leave the 200 lockdown and death row inmates in their cells if the flood happened and save the other 5,000 inmates by busing them to local and regional prisons. The 200 inmates in lockdown were too dangerous to risk moving them in the prison buses, the only lockable vehicles they have.

The warden said the decision came to this: He knew that the newspapers, governor, legislators, and people would hate him for leaving 200 men to drown. They would also hate him if those men escaped because there was no doubt in his mind that they would do whatever it took to get what they wanted wherever they went. That would take innocent lives. He decided he prefered to have the 200 inmate deaths on his conscience to the loss of a single innocent civilian's life.

It got me wondering whether this state (or any state, hint-hint) has a plan for evacuating their penetientiaries. I don't know, do you? Motel 6? Holiday Inn Express?

Well then.............all you need to do is move to Texas. You will have your streamlined system for killing the perpetrators. No radical "anti death penalty advocates" to abuse the system down there.

You can get sufficient "justice" whatever that means, by incarcerating them for life.

Of course, in your scenario, it's a perfect system, and every person put to death in Texas committed the crime for which they were convicted, right.

The fact is that is costs significantly more to put a person to death. And all the bull$hit in the world is not going to change this fact. So, as a conservative person, you should prefer to incarcerate them for life because it costs you less out of your pocket.