I wonder if California thinks that after having to feed house, feed, and clothe Charles Manson for 47 years before he finally kicked off from natural causes.

At somewhere around $1 per gram for Potassium Cyanide the Gas Chamber could have saved the state MILLIONS.

Problem is that the death penalty automatically kicks in appeals. So millions of dollars in court costs over a number of years.

that is a different issue, one that is easily solved.

I am against the death penalty. Why? Because it would be the government implementing it.

Ask yourself if you trust Jay Inslee, Jerry Brown, Barrack Obama, or Rod Blagojevich to have the power to kill US citizens or not.

Also noteworthy are the people who were executed and found post-humously innocent with DNA evidence.

Remember, if the IRS can be used as a political weapon, why can't the death penalty?

So if the appeals took 20 years the state would still save 17 years of room and board.


As for the appeals, time to limit them to strictly trial related issues. Appeals based on the drugs used to execute are ridiculous. Better than Electrocution, hanging or Gas Chambers. A heroin OD is effective too. Look at all the fatal ones on a daily basis. Too much "H" and it's permanently 'Lights Out". Maybe it's time to bring back the Guillotine. Works every time and is instantaneous.

while I agree with the premise, the jury are the ones who condemn someone to death. We need appeals, no doubt about it, but they need to be limited.

I have to reluctantly agree with this sentiment.

Sometimes wonder if allowing a convict to volunteer for execution would work... that is as complex.

And in almost all cases who appoints the bureaucracy which helps with the prosecution or in some cases of recess/retirement of prosecutors, DOES the entire prosecution? Who appoints appellate judges who might fix things that went wrong?

We'd be putting our lives into Jay Inslee's hands. Who here is comfortable with that?

Alpine makes good points as always on this subject.
My gut says differently... I'd like criminals who commit violent acts on strangers to be killed, or as a 2* alternative, a deep dark hole, fed through a hole in the thick door. Maybe a single light bulb that can be changed from outside the door.

Yesh, mistakes can be made, and wrongful prosecutions can be made.
Tough spot.

I get conflicted on this too. There are a lot of scum out there. Murderers, rapists, etc. I feel fairly comfortable with average law abiding citizens taking them out in self-defense, but as far as granting the state the ability to use its error-prone bureaucracy to select citizens to die, well, how about we allow that when politicians no longer lie?

What about if the evidence is incontrovertible and/or the guilty party confesses?

The "stranger" factor moves me far towards death penalty. There can be almost no-mitigating factors that outweigh the awfulness of murder or rape or random beating of a stranger. Black and White to my simple thinking.

Is there any set of circumstances or safety nets that you would be comfy with that included the death penalty?

In theory yes, there are some circumstances I'd be OK with the state doing that as you described.

In practice, no. Because if you give them permission under some circumstances, they will eventually expand it. Show me one aspect of government that has not grown hugely beyond its original scope. Show me one aspect of government that has no corruption in it at all.

At least with screwing up a life sentence they can let the guy out. What happens when you screw up a death sentence?

A "Free person" is a slave to the system working daily to pay for life and TAXES.

Why cant these folks in prison WORK during their sentence? Like real work, not the nancy shit they sometimes do.

Some of the festival circuit in Louisiana uses convict labor for clean-up. Guys in orange jumpsuits were out picking up trash and sometimes other labor tasks such bike racks for crowd control.

When we had to address them, there was plenty of “yes sir” in their responses and to me they seemed thankful to be outside and doing something. LA uses state prison labor for other tasks and projects to the extent that the state economy is partially based on the lesser expense of that labor.

I had occasion to work with con crews fighting brush fires in southern CA back in the '70's. We weren't supposed to talk to them, but some talk and interaction was unavoidable. They seemed happy to be outside with actual work to do, plus they got paid some pittance for doing it, something like $0.80/hr or something like that. Whenever we were going to be working alongside them, their handlers always made sure to emphasize that the only convicts who weren't allowed on con crews were rapists and arsonists. That meant there was a good possibility there were convicted murderers in the crew. The guards ran pretty hard herd on them, but sometimes they ended up with a nugget guard who didn't know his way around a fire. On one occasion, I watched a sheriff's deputy try to kill his entire crew by mistakenly lighting a back fire downhill from his crew. The fire rapidly grew beyond our control (I was on a 6x6 pumper truck on a road cut into the side of the hill, we couldn't really move to help them) and went screaming up the hill behind the con crew. They were smart enough to not try to outrun it (you'll die running uphill away from a fire), and instead ran directly at our truck. The two of us in the back of the truck each had 1" hoses, and we basically just tried to lay down a small path for them to run through to get to safety. Once they got through to us (lots of thank yous), they as a man went and sat on the side of the road behind us (and within easy reach of our hoses) and told the deputy to go fuck himself, they weren't moving until they brought in someone who knew his ass from a hole in the ground. Can't say I blame them. I don't think one of them wanted to go back to prison, they just didn't want to be killed by their handler.