Reply #43: A response

[varkam]

Executions cost more than life in prison
-because death penalty opponents raise the cost by streching out appeals, obstructing execution dates, not because of death penalty advocates

There's a reason for that, though: due process. Also the execution itself is quite costly.

Innocent may be wrongly executed
-and spending your entire life in prison until dying of old age when you're innocent is better?

You can exonerate and release someone who has been wrongly incarcerated for twenty years. You can't exonerate and release someone who has been executed.

It is not a deterrent
-it is to the executed murderer

So is life imprisonment, provided that they do no escape. But the argument usually is that CP is a societal deterrent to capital crimes - which it is not. States with the DP actually tend to have higher murder rates than states without it.

Most civilized societies do not use the death penalty
-so, if you have the death penalty, you are not civilized? Or if you are a (what, a barbarian country?) you have the death penalty? This isn't an argument for or against the death penalty in any way.

It could be.

Capital punishment is not a solution to anything
-it solved the problem of the murderer possibly committing future crimes, didn't it?

So does life imprisonment, again provided that they do not escape.

-all punishment is biased. Capital punishment actually shows less bias than does prison sentencing, fine assessment, probation or parole. If capital punishment were broadened, bias in the system would go down.

That sort of misses the point though - namely that capital punishment is biased, especially if you happen to be black or hispanic.