Another horrific botched execution in the U.S. -- condemned struggles to live for 2 hours

PHOENIX (AP) — A condemned Arizona inmate gasped for more than an hour and a half during his execution Wednesday before he died in an episode sure to add to the scrutiny surrounding the death penalty in the U.S.

Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne's office said Joseph Rudolph Wood was pronounced dead at 3:49 p.m., one hour and 57 minutes after the execution started.

Wood's lawyers had filed emergency appeals with federal and state courts while the execution was underway, demanding that it be stopped. The appeal said Wood was "gasping and snorting for more than an hour."

veya_victaous wrote:Guillotines still seem the best   

How expensive is the death penalty? Just over a year ago, Fox News issued this alarming statement:

Every time a killer is sentenced to die, a school closes.

Dramatic, sure. But some claim that the data backs up these assertions.

While the actual execution costs taxpayers fairly little (the drugs used in Texas run a mere $83), the costs associated with death penalty trials and the resulting incarceration are disproportionately higher.

Citing Richard C. Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center, Fox reported that studies have “uniformly and conservatively shown that a death-penalty trial costs $1 million more than one in which prosecutors seek life without parole.”

A Urban Institute study (downloads as a pdf) found that “[i]n Maryland death penalty cases cost 3 times more than non-death penalty cases, or $3 million for a single case” while a 2004 Report from Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury Office of Research that claimed “[i]n Tennessee, death penalty trials cost an average of 48% more than the average cost of trials in which prosecutors seek life imprisonment.”

And in cash strapped California, the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice issued a report (downloads as a pdf) that concluded, among other things, that “[i]t can certainly be said that death penalty trials take longer and cost considerably more than non-death murder trials.”

I assumed that this was because of all of the post-trial finagling that goes on. I was wrong. After reviewing data from state reports, Amnesty International concluded that “the greatest costs associated with the death penalty occur prior to and during trial, not in post-conviction proceedings. Even if all post-conviction proceedings (appeals) were abolished, the death penalty would still be more expensive than alternative sentences.”

The numbers associated with jail time are just as large. In terms of dollars spent behind bars, the California Commission found that “the additional cost of confining an inmate to death row, as compared to the maximum security prisons where those sentenced to life without possibility of parole ordinarily serve their sentences, is $90,000 per year per inmate. With California’s current death row population of 670, that accounts for $63.3 million annually.” Since that statement, California’s death row has grown to 721, the largest in the country.

The story is the same in North Carolina. A 2010 Duke University study found that taxpayers in the Tarheel State could save $11 million a year by substituting life in prison for the death penalty.

The numbers are even more dramatic in Garden State. Prior to the abolishing the death penalty in the state, a report by New Jersey Policy Perspectives found that “New Jersey taxpayers over the last 23 years have paid more than a quarter billion dollars on a capital punishment system that has executed no one.”

But the end result is worth it, right?

Maybe not. At least ten states, including Florida, Texas and California, have been forced to release prisoners early because of overcrowding – all of those states have expensive death penalty programs. Budgetary restraints have resulted in shortened sentences (some as low as 20%) and lay-offs of corrections officers inside prisons, as well as reduced numbers of police officers on the streets. More telling, in one Washington county, Prosecutor Dan Satterberg was forced to eliminate the jobs of 36 prosecutors since 2008 – all while the cost of defending two active capital cases escalated.

Who pays those costs? You and I. State and local governments typically bear the burden of paying to pursue death penalty cases – and that means tax dollars. Even prosecutors agree that those costs aren’t always worth it.

Nems wrote:why not just shoot them in the head?

Nems wrote:why not just shoot them in the head?

Original Quill wrote:

Nems wrote:why not just shoot them in the head?

Well, as the Germans found out in the 1940s, it's too expensive.

But in fact...they claim that it is the humane way, and they are kinder, gentler conservatives.

Nems wrote:why not just shoot them in the head?

Ben_Reilly wrote:

veya_victaous wrote:Guillotines still seem the best   

You know, at least with the guillotine, the condemned know what's in store. These drug cocktails my country is administrating -- very few even know what's going into them. It's like our death row inmates have become guinea pigs. That is the most "cruel and unusual" punishment I can imagine -- "we're going to tell you the day you die, we're going to kill you -- but we're not quite sure about what we're going to inject into you, let's find out."

Raggamuffin wrote:

Nems wrote:why not just shoot them in the head?

Far too untidy. Someone would have to clean up the blood and get their hands dirty.

veya_victaous wrote:

Raggamuffin wrote:

Far too untidy. Someone would have to clean up the blood and get their hands dirty.

Yeah you could make a Modern Guillotine in a fashion similar to some of the chicken slaughter houses that is 'self cleaning'     

Nems wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

Well, as the Germans found out in the 1940s, it's too expensive.

But in fact...they claim that it is the humane way, and they are kinder, gentler conservatives.

It cant be as expensive as the present way?

FluffyBunny wrote:Do posters here agree with capital punishment in the main?

I do not,I was curious to know what others thought   

FluffyBunny wrote:Do posters here agree with capital punishment in the main?

I do not,I was curious to know what others thought