Governments also save on reaching plea deals in cases where the death penalty is in play. I'm pro death penalty largely because of that and because the families of victims deserve appeasement.
But not really a huge deal if some are so vehemently against it. It's something I'm willing to give up in some sort of compromise. I really don't understand why some liberals seem to make it one of their top issues.
http://www.deathpenalty.org/article.php?id=556
Some highlights as I doubt you'll read it
• There is no correlation between state’s possessing the death penalty and their ability to get life sentences. The best available studies show that, while the presence of the death penalty might make District Attorneys drive harder bargains, there was no impact on the overall probability of a plea
• There is good reason to believe that the death penalty makes plea bargains less likely—as Northwestern University Economics Professor Jeff Ely puts it, “The threat of the death penalty makes defendants more willing to accept a given plea bargain offer. But a tough-on-crime DA takes up the slack by making tougher offers. What is the net effect…the threat of the death penalty results in fewer plea bargains and more cases going to trial.”
• The threat of execution can be enough to scare people into taking responsibility for crimes they did not commit, especially since many of these confessions come at the end of grueling interrogations in which police are permitted to lie to suspects about the evidence, or lack thereof, gathered against them. DNA evidence has exonerated a number of prisoners who are serving life sentences on the basis of these coerced pleas. As recently as 2009, the Governor of Nebraska had to release 6 prisoners, five of whom had falsely confessed, for a rape and murder that occurred more than twenty years earlier. Peoples’ lives are ruined in this process, even if they are released. Richard Danziger, a Texas man put in jail because of an associates’ death penalty-inspired plea, suffered severe brain damage as a result of beatings he received in prison for a rape he had nothing to do with.
Basically the idea that the death penalty is a bargaining chip is more dangerous than actually helpful by all serious accounts.
It's not really a top issue for me. It's my moral equivalency that abortion is to many republicans, except that my state could be doing the killing. My opinion, states can have it if they want it, but federal dollars shouldn't be funding it.
