One of the major arguments for death penalty is that it’s a deterrent for future crimes, but statistics clearly shows that it does not affect crime rate at all.  Most of the time people do things in a heat of passion.  It is rare that people plan for things.  Part of the perception problem is due to the ubiquity of these Law and Order shows, which obviously overrepresents life experiences.

The question should be, do you want revenge, or do you want justice?

If you’re worried about money, the war on drugs will cost significantly more.  The other “war” doubly and obviously so.

Interestingly, the suicide rate was/is (haven’t looked this up in awhile) is nearly twice as high as the homicide rate.  And (at least in NY presently) we only consider the death penalty for first and second degree murder.  A murder is a homicide, while a homicide isn’t always a murder, so the rate is even less.

I’m totally spamming your comments by now, but I also forgot to mention that, though it might seem counterintuitive, the death penalty, on average, costs *significantly* more per execution than the life sentence.  You can look that up somewhere.