Dear Wordwind: I think capital punishment makes more sense than spending millions
to keep someone in a relatively luxurious prison, when the money could be much
better spent helping the unfortunate. If you think I am exaggerating, check out the
cost of imprisonment. Almost fifty years ago it was quoted at forty thousand per annum.
With inflation, it would not surprise me if current figure were close to a hundread thousand
per annum. Do guys who rape and then murder little girls just to prevent their testifying
against them deserve to have that much money spent to keep them alive?

I went and looked it up. New argument for life imprisonment is that it is cheaper that execution.
I confess I did not know the lawyers made so much money out of it.

In Texas, a death penalty case costs an average of $2.3 million,
about 3 times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the
highest security level for 40 years. This figure does not include the
cost of the federal appeals process where 50 % to 70% of the death
sentences are overturned.