Again there's that parallel drawn between killing perpetrated by the government in the name of the Almighty State and killing perpetrated by murderous criminals in the name of evil. First Barnacle, and now you too.
If you object to the prison conditions that murderers are subjected to, that's fine, but it's not germane to the question of whether or not they should be killed as the ultimate expression of government force.
You raise "taxpayer expense," but I think it's been fairly well established that providing due process in death penalty cases costs more than warehousing murderers for the rest of their lives.
Some might argue that they get too many costly appeals, but lack of due process, judicial abuses, and corner-cutting is exactly what scuttled the Illinois death penalty.
Do the extra appeals have any useful function at acquitting those who turn out to be innocent?
If so, why are they not made available to those "merely" sentenced to life in prison, whose guilt is presumably less certain?
And if not, why bother with them at all?