[Strategerist]

I still insist that it is a rather effective deterrent

The above is probably the weakest of all the pro-death penalty arguments. The type of people typically being executed are the sort who rarely think more than 5 minutes ahead. It's really unlikely there's any sort of rational balancing of the punishments vs. the rewards of whatever murder they're committing.

[madprof98]

The type of people typically being executed are the sort who rarely think more than 5 minutes ahead. It's really unlikely there's any sort of rational balancing of the punishments vs. the rewards of whatever murder they're committing.

Excellent point. There have actually been studies which concluded that the death penalty has some deterrent effect, but it is hard to see how it would impact men like the ones now on Death Row. The murders they committed were generally crimes of passion (shooting up the lady and her lover for cheating on me) or "cover up" crimes committed in the course of other crimes (killing the clerks/customers who saw the robbery I committed). These were often very cruel because the people committing them were very cruel, but they were not rational or thoughtfully calculated in any but a very few cases.

[teenyelliott]

I did not mean a deterrent to additional psychopaths, as I pointed out in my post. It is 100% assured that the POS who is killed will never bother anyone again.

And your point about minimal chance of escape for lifers might be valid, but if they are dead we don't have to worry. Personally, I would rather spend the additional money to put then to death (if that is true), than give them medical care and ice cream bars for the rest of their lives.