Oh and organized doesn't mean an organization. War is between organizations. Organizations are groups. One individual is not a group and there fore can only commit an act of war in conjunction with other individuals.

@bo - As Mark Twain once said "lies, damn lies, and statistics." Your numbers are only per year, not per prisoner. 43K for 50 years versus 90K for 15. Do the math.

@Draug … read the links when I post them. I typed out incarceration costs, not the full costs.

"It is sometimes suggested that abolishing capital punishment is unfair to the taxpayer, on the assumption that life imprisonment is more expensive than execution. If one takes into account all the relevant costs, however, just the reverse is true. "The death penalty is not now, nor has it ever been, a more economical alternative to life imprisonment.") A murder trial normally takes much longer when the death penalty is at issue than when it is not. Litigation costs – including the time of judges, prosecutors, public defenders, and court reporters, and the high costs of briefs – are mostly borne by the taxpayer. The extra costs of separate death row housing and additional security in court and elsewhere also add to the cost. A 1982 study showed that were the death penalty to be reintroduced in New York, the cost of the capital trial alone would be more than double the cost of a life term in prison. (N.Y. State Defenders Assn., "Capital Losses" 1982)"

@Draug: No, I said murder is essentially an act of war. I gave the definitions to prove as well, those go unegated. As far as murder in itsself already being resolved with the committed murder, if that were so there would be no purpose to this debate to begin with because the question of murderers would already have been resolved. However, the murder is not resolved because we as citizens take offense to other people going around killing. So we prosecute them. No, the murder itsself is not the resolution at all. Still another parallel to war. The actual attack is not the resolution.

For those who oppose the death penalty because of the Bible, I think they need to consider the verse, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man."

And this essentially goes to why I support the death penalty. It's not for pragmatic reasons -- whether to lower crime (it may, but it may not) or to save money (kind of an appalling reason to decide to kill somebody, I think), or even for revenge per se. Rather it is an extremely solemn statement of how seriously we take life, that you forfeit the right to your whole life if you take somebody else's wrongly.

I do agree that there should be a very high standard of evidence for applying the death penalty.

@bo_sox: Okay, if you want to construe it that way. Lets take a moral look at your economics argument. Essential what you are saying is that it doesn't matter whether it is moral or immoral to have capital punishment, so long as you can balance the books. You put a price on life. I quoute: "death penalty is $90,000/year, life in prison w/out parole is approximately $47,000/year)." So that means that a person who is sentenced to death is no worth $90000 a year. A person incarcerated tor life is worth $40000 a year, and further if you really want to talk beyond assholish, you are comparing the worth of their lives to the lives of the people they killed. Lets take a look back to those organized crime syndacates I was refering to earlier, lets say the police conduct a raid, many of the murderers are killed in the firefight. What do people do? Do they really mourn the loss of a bunch of thugs and murderers? The only difference between this situation and a trial for death row, is that the people invovled didn't have an opportunity to stand trial. So yes I am advocating I would rather have someone who kills on a regular basis die than sit in a jail cell and have the ever so slight opportunity to become free again. If we can justify abolishing the death penalty and avoid the moral questions just by saying it is too expensive, we start down the slippery slope to anarchy and every man for himself. If you can justify one thing it makes it all the easier to keep on justifying further action.

"you are comparing the worth of their lives to the lives of the people they killed."

No. Just fucking no.

How about this: I am stating how much people like you and I pay to incarcerate them. Usually the entire country complains when their tax dollars go places they don't want them to go to, so I'm trying to help you. If you consider that assholish, then you're beyond assholish and need to figure out what assholish is. Why don't you shut the fuck up and go troll a forum of six-year-olds?

@semck - it is an extremely solemn statement of how seriously we take life, that you forfeit the right to your whole life if you take somebody else's wrongly.

Or to put it another way. "We are so calvalier with life and so certain we are right that we will kill someone who is also cavalier with life and certain they are right."

Evertone who kills thinks they are justified in killing be that the Norweigen guy or advocates of the death penalty.

"Evertone who kills thinks they are justified in killing be that the Norweigen guy or advocates of the death penalty."

^You should look into this sentence again.

@bo_sox: So it comes down to throwing out insults does it? It still goes that looking at a moral issue from an economic stand point is itsself immoral. Basically you are saying it doesn't matter if it is right or wrong, we just need to pay the bills, and balance our budget.