So small government gets to decide who lives and who dies? What a bunch of self righteous hypocrites.

wayneuber, why not address the hard numbers instead of hiding behind a conspiracy theory?

These are hard numbers. Number of murders. Population of the State. “Murders per Capita” is concrete information and easy to calculate and verify. (if you care to look)

Fact: Death Penalty states had 4.9 murders per 100,000 people, while non-Death Penalty states had 2.8 murders per 100,000 people.

I assert that the Death Penalty NOT a deterrant. I proved it by stating national statistics and providing a link to the data.

Refute that if you can. IMO, you’re not going to like what you see...but sometimes the truth hurts. And, what you do with that truth (deny, obfuscate, dodge) shows us what kind of person you are.

What a waste of taxpayer money. Death by natural causes on death row? What is wrong with that picture? Stand-In-The-Door

I'm gonna have to agree with stand-in-th-door on this one! How does one get placed on death row for so long and then die of natural causes? There goes my hard earned taxes!

"Some crimes cry out for the death penalty in being so heinous it would be a crime to let that person live, enjoy tv, laugh at jokes and have even a life in prison."

Maybe so, but the difficulty comes in making the determination of which crimes those are. There is no consensus, prosecutors have discretion on which cases are tried capitally. The process used for deciding on the DP is so fraught with bias and human error so as to call its fairness into question. Thus, we are left with no reliable or objective method to make the determination you seek. In the absence of such a method, it is best to do without the punishment altogether.

These are old laws still on the books back from the old days, like back before 1900. No I'm not saying that on a whole the US is not civilized, just parts of it, where mostly so called Christians, howl for the Death Penalty. I thought Christians were all about forgivness of ones Sins. Does this not apply to all Sins??? Are the Sins Catagorised??? Are the only Sins to be foriven are the ones that make you and the church feel better, or have a direct meaning to you.