other options:
- give him life in jail, and then poison his food so he dies
- release him and shoot him with a drone
The appeal process for a death row inmate costs mega $$. According to this article, in CA, a death row case costs a staggering amount - $300M.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jun/20/california-death-penalty-execution-costs
Even if other states are more “efficient” with their death row inmates, they are still spending a whopping amount of $$.
Here are some numbers for Tsarnaev:
http://m.wpxi.com/news/news/national/cost-life-prison-tsarnaev-vs-death-row/nmGhC/#__federated=1
I am actually not opposed to death penalty, but I think that dollar-wise, this was a bad decision. Had he been put away for life, he would have been mostly forgotten, so appeals would have dried out naturally. Now, because he is young, handsome, and as some belive, possibly brainwashed into terrorism, I guarantee that there will be battles over his case.
As MOfWC said, put him in a cell with Jeffrey Dahmer’s prisonmates…
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The full burden of the death penalty in California has been laid bare by new research that calculates that each of the 13 prisoners executed in the state over the past three decades has cost more than $300m (£185m).
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The study, by two senior legal figures, includes costs incurred at both state and federal level in keeping 714 death row inmates incarcerated as well as steering them through the tortuous judicial process all the way to the death chamber. The average length of time between conviction and execution in California now stands at more than a quarter of a century – double the national average.
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The costs incurred includes cost of keeping 714 Death Row inmates incarcerated? Why would those costs be included? Those costs would exist either way. I doubt that the cost to incarcerate L w/o P inmates cost much less to incarcerate.
I think some funny math is being used.
There is an additional, automatic, appeal (the “direct appeal”) to the state’s highest court if a death penalty is given. This may further be appealed to the US Supreme Court if the decision is unfavorable to the death row inmate (the US Supreme Court is not required to take the case). Also, the death row inmate may have more incentive to appeal (beyond the automatic extra one), and some lawyers and organizations opposed to the death penalty may have more incentive to assist appeals, compared to a life no parole inmate.
According to http://m.wpxi.com/news/news/national/cost-life-prison-tsarnaev-vs-death-row/nmGhC/#__federated=1 , the cost of the death row incarceration is higher than that of life no parole, plus there are the extra legal costs for the additional appeals and procedures.
For those who are saying this will drag on because it’s Massachusetts (implying its liberal leanings), these were federal charges in a federal court and he is being handled by the federal bureau of prisons. State law has no role here.
I have a right-wing acquaintance who actually felt Tsarnaev would get off scot-free because of the “lefties” in MA–his word. No way. He committed a crime against the entire state–he hit us hard on a uniquely Massachusetts holiday.
It is a poorly written piece, but there is no funny math. The cost of keeping a death row inmate locked up is 2-3 times that of a prisoner who got a life sentence - per year. Since these prisoners linger in the system on average as long as if not longer than regular prisoners, these costs add up. Plus, the appeals cost extra $$. Life cannot be taken without due process, therefore, there are more safeguards/chances for appeals built into the system for death row inmates than for other prisoners.
I don’t care about the analyses of “no deterrence” in death sentences because we’re taught in law school deterrence is only one of the three reasons for punishment. The others are deterrence of the individual, which we agree could be served by life in prison, and moral disapproval. This penalty expresses extreme moral disapproval.
That happens to be why I don’t support the death penalty. I believe that, yes, it’s a waste of money - though a SuperMax prison is also a huge waste of money - but my objection is rooted in the book of Genesis (Bereshit in Hebrew). The essence, which was sort of taken into Christianity, is that humans must confess their sins and offer repentance. That is, as the story of Jacob and Esau says you confess to the wronged not to God and offer repentance to the wronged. (The difference in traditions speaks volumes and in Judaism the concept of confession/repentance to God is treated differently, as a “return” or teshuvah.) If this is done, then as the story of Joseph makes clear, it is up to God to judge what that means in the end. So my objection is simple: by ending a life, we end the ability to confess and offer repentance and that, to me, means we place ourselves in the role of God.
I understand the Noahide law speaks of eye for eye but what’s missed is that is meant as the extent of justice that may be enacted, that it comes out of the story of Cain’s descendant Lamech who kills a young man merely because he was insulted. It never imposes a requirement that you take full vengeance, something that is often glossed over in other traditions to make them appear more understanding and merciful. That you can take a life for a life doesn’t mean you must. To argue you must is silly: it’s like the Babylonian rule that if a house falls and kills the son of the owner then the son of the builder must be killed, meaning a set of mechanical, non-human rules outside our actual traditions.
So while I fully share the extent of moral condemnation, I’d lock the guy up. And on a selfish basis, I don’t want to hear about him ever again. That said, if you’re on that jury, you have already said you would sentence a person to death and this guy is by that standard extremely deserving of the penalty.
MADad, you may not have followed the beginning of the Tsarnaev trial but anyone who was against the death penalty was automatically excluded so all 12 jurors were comfortable at least in theory with the death penalty and thus did not reflect the majority of MA residents, who oppose the death penalty.
You only named deterrence and moral disapproval (two instead of three reasons). Isn’t the third one the practical one of preventing a criminal from continuing to harm or be a threat to others?
Post #48, you can believe what you want but for the rest of us who are non religious, we would like to live long enough to see our grand children and not have to wait in the end.
He has enough time to repent before they kill him.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/dzhokhar-tsarnaev-likely-wont-face-execution-for-a-very-long-time/ indicates that
It’s true that the jury members had to be “death qualified.” Sometimes having a DP qualified jury is desired because they are believed to be more of the “law and order” type of people.
I don’t understand the point that death row prisoners “linger” longer in the system. Linger longer than who? those with Life w/o Parole? Those are the only people they should be compared with.
It has only been in recent years that I’ve come to be morally opposed to the death penalty. I was hoping he would be given life without parole (In the Federal system, there is no such thing as parole. You will serve your full sentence), because I think it’s a much more severe punishment. From an NPR story on the subject, I heard that under a life sentence, Tsarnaev would have been confined to a solitary prison cell for 23 out 24 hours, and given only one hour per day of time outside for sunlight and exercise. He would eat his meals alone, would have no contact with other inmates, and have access to none of the amenities he had heretofore spent his 21 years taking for granted.
Human beings are social animals who crave companionship, community, and physical intimacy. He would have none of these things for the rest of his natural days had he been sentenced to life. Such profound banishment from among humankind constitutes the severest punishment, one which would, over time, inspire the most abject form of despair and mental anguish. He is only 21 years old. He could live a very long time, growing more hopeless by the day as the reality of his sentence dawns on him. Actually, I think I’d prefer to be put to death, and get it over with, than to live caged and alone for the rest of my life.
How very ironic…Of the two options, the death penalty might actually be the more merciful…
Desired by the prosecution – the defense would desire the opposite. But if the prosecution dismisses all anti-death-penalty jurors and the defense dismisses all pro-death-penalty jurors, wouldn’t that mean make it impossible to seat a jury?
Because we are comparing the exact same populations.
Just a handful of death row inmates get executed within a few years of the verdict. When death sentences get overturned, the prisoner does not get to walk free. Because the prisoner is already convicted of the crime, he or she goes back to serve a life sentence. Meanwhile, money has been spend on keeping them in a specially arranged way (death row inmates cannot be incarcerated with the general prison population, as far as I know), on appeals, etc. - and the end result is the same: life without parole. Why not lock them up and throw the key out to begin with? Makes financial sense.
So here is a hypothetical scenario:
Prisoner Z1: LWOP, spends in prison 20 years at $35K/yr.
Prisoner Z2: DP, spends 5 years waiting for appeal results at $70K/yr, plus $200-500k in appeals costs, then gets LWOP and ends up spending the last 15 years in prison at $35K/yr.
Which scenario is cheaper?
(For illustration purposes, this paper had a list of somewhat recent death sentences in my state and the outcomes. Most have succeeded in their appeals and are now serving life.
http://www.wsba.org/~/media/Files/WSBA-wide%20Documents/wsba%20death%20penalty%20report.ashx )
I think the Federal Prison system is a different animal from State Prison systems. Apparently, in the Federal system, Tsarnaev would have been in solitary, even if his sentence was life in prison. Solitary confinement, it seems, is more costly than that among a general prison population.
There would be nothing for him to appeal if he was given life w/o parole as he admitted in court he committed the acts he was charged with. It’s only the death sentence which would be appealed, not his guilt or innocence. His attorneys plead for life w/o parole.