Countries With the Most Executions

Figures for 2014:

Iran: 289+

Afghanistan: 6

Belarus: 3+

China: a lot

Egypt: 15+

Equatorial Guinea: 9

Iraq: 61+

Japan: 3

Jordan: 11

Malaysia: 2+

North Korea: probably a lot

Pakistan: 7

"Palestine": 2+

Saudi Arabia: 90+

Singapore: 2

Somalia: 14+

Sudan: 23+

Taiwan: 5

UAE: 1

USA: 35

Vietnam: 3+

Yemen: 22+

There have been a very large number of death sentences given in Nigeria and Egypt, over 2000, but so far they were not carried out in 2014.

And Syria continues to prefer the use of barrel bombs and snipers over courtrooms and lethal injection, as do many other places.

@kolp That's what I was thinking.

And if 1,300+ get executed some JetPunkers will be upset because then they'll have to take a quiz again to get their 5 JetPunk points back.

Sounds like the making of a new quiz!!

Yeah, China and Iran are the champions. And we don't really know about North Korea. But what about Burma and Syria? I would have thought that they would officially assassinate people.

Don't knock #5, it's better than their rankings in education, happiness, and health care.

@ Arp2600, I was wondering the same thing!

@FractalDoom, Sadly, it's true

@Quizmeister, Japan...

39 out of a population of 300 million+ seems perfectly reasonable. Syria doesn't "execute" it just wholesale exterminates.

I wholeheartedly agree "dunkinggandalf", it is unreasonable that only 39 people were executed in the US last year.

Depends how you define 'reason' Kal. There are no empirically justifiable reasons for having the death penalty - it's not a deterrent, it's not cheaper than imprisonment, it's just barbaric. Look at the other countries on the list.

Why is it barbaric? Keeping someone confined in a box for 80 years is better? Allowing murderers and pedarests to reenter the community is better? Or letting them live long happy lives regardless of how many innocent lives they shattered? Why is it so important that every single human being on Earth live for as long as absolutely possible? I honestly don't get it. You're giving barbarians a bad name for calling what happens in the US justice system "barbaric."

Taiwan and Japan? Very nice places. At least we're not snooty and condescending hypocrites about it.

Also @Wombat, the only reason people can get away with saying that execution is more expensive than life in prison is because of the court costs involved. And that only applies in the United States where those convicted of capital crimes are given decades and ample opportunity to appeal their case at the expense of the tax payer. I am not against this, and I assume you're probably in favor, though I do think things could be done to streamline the judicial process without sacrificing justice, and this would eliminate the extra cost.

28 people of 319 million. That's a grand total of 0.000009% of our population. Now I don't agree with the crimes that demand capital punishment in the middle east, but for crimes like serial murder here in the states, I have no problem with the death penalty. Hypothetically as a family member of someone who was murdered I would not be real happy that my relative's live was cut short but their killer is being protected.

Exactly Kal, the reason people can get away with saying the death penalty is more expensive than imprisonment is because it is. And the US doesn't allow ample avenues for appeal, it's a bizarre system, enslaved to procedure, not justice. One quick example, public defenders in the US are notoriously inept, but if you're in the mood for some black comedy have a look at Joe Frank Cannon, an attorney so manifestly inadequate that you wouldn't believe it if you saw it in a movie. Hundreds of people accused of murder were 'represented' by Cannon, and hundreds were executed. Were they guilty? Who knows, Cannon was asleep a lot of the time. In the famous case of Burdine v Johnson, Cannon's file on his client was a total of three pages long. A normal file in a capital case would ordinarily run into many thousands of pages. You need to do much more than streamline your system if you're going to make it anywhere near fair enough to make a plausible case for the efficacy of the death penalty.

What do you mean by efficacy? Do you not believe that people sentenced to death eventually die? I never argued that the death penalty is a good deterrent etc so what kind of efficaciousness are we talking about?

Imprisoning people for life on false charges is not superior to executing them on false charges. Particularly if we're going to assume that it's so nice in jail that those *not* sentenced to execution get a significantly worse crack at the justice system than those who are. THIS is (the meat of) the argument I'm making. NOT that doing bad things means you deserve to be punished. NOT that the death penalty saves money (though the fact that it doesn't points to one of the problems with the justice system I highlighted above). and NOT that it's effective as a deterrent. I know that what I'm saying is not mainstream and a bit hard to follow but I know you, Wombat, are smart enough to do so. So please read me carefully if you want to respond to something I said.

Wombat, there are inept people in every profession - doctors, teachers, plumbers, whatever. Don't take one notable case and brand everyone in the profession with the same brush. Being a public defender is not an easy job. Many are overworked, but if someone does actually get an incompetent one they can file an appeal based on ineffective counsel. (And of course, anyone who loses a case thinks their attorney was inept.)

Kalbahamut has commented on this quiz 38 times, including one reply to his own comment, and another 8 comments posted before he gave someone else a chance to respond. An entertaining and passionate defence of killing lawbreakers.

Happy to entertain. I don't feel passionately about this issue. I just have thought it through.

Not everyone given the death penalty is actually guilty. Avoiding executing innocent people is the biggest reason why the death penalty should be banned.

@kal - prisons are far from ideal and in some cases they are also barbaric. I don't have an answer to the question of how to reform them. But the answer certainly isn't just kill them. I am perfectly happy for any criminal to reenter "the community" (although I'm not sure what exactly you mean by that) as long as they have served enough punishment to deter others from committing the same crime (there is no evidence that the death penalty is any better than prison as a deterrent) and there have been measures taken to ensure that the offender will not reoffend (this is harder to ensure, but the answer isn't just killing them). I don't think it is necessary to make people not live long and happy lives - that is called revenge and is not the purpose of punishment. It is important that people are granted the right to live for as long as possible because nobody wants to be killed or be denied access to life-saving healthcare.

Where this ideal stops is certainly up for debate. A discussion of its logical extreme is seen in Yuval Noah Harari's book Homo Deus. But it isn't that hard to see where the ideal originates.

If your main argument is that jail is worse than death, then I am going to have to disagree. Even if it was true I don't think that particularly makes much difference to whether the state should be killing people. Having the death penalty does impact a society, not just the person being executed. I am quite surprised to see someone who doesn't even agree with the idea of nationalism saying that individual nations would be better off killing their own citizens when they break laws (though which laws exactly I don't see stated). Your main argument seems to be that individuals can't reenter the community (presumably one within one nation) and so are worthless. Humans' sole function is not to form part of a society.

If you think that I am arguing for revenge, for the killing or indefinite detention of people who are able to safely reenter society, for the death penalty as a deterrent, or for "just" killing anyone.... then you haven't carefully read my arguments because I've actually argued *against* all of those things.

At least you did understand my point about life in prison being a worse punishment than death. And yes, we disagree on this point.

Human beings are defined by their relationships with other people. Philosophically I think it can be said we don't even exist without them. I've argued in the past that there are two different types of morality- individual and societal, that these two moralities are often in direct opposition to each other and that both have a right to defend themselves. There's a huge difference between society and states defined by nationalism, even if most of us currently live in societies dominated by the former.

You haven't explicitly argued for these things but some of your arguments seem to revolve around the idea that because these people have "shattered many innocent lives" they should not be allowed to "live long happy lives". I was arguing against that. If you didn't mean what I think I have reasonably interpreted from your Jul 9 2014 post please tell me what it did mean. I am interested in your idea that people are defined through their relationships with other people. Would you say that people who have less social interaction exist less than other people? As somebody who probably has less social interaction than average I would disagree. I can probably agree with your idea of individual versus societal morality a bit more though. From the point of view of society it may not matter what happens to the people who are removed from it (although I would certainly argue that if execution, especially if public, is reported on and made a topic of national interest that is bad for society).

That's not my argument and I've never said that so I don't know why you think my arguments "revolve around this." You are probably just conflating my opinions with those of other people you've heard argue for the death penalty. It's my opinion that people on both sides of this debate often make bad arguments.

In my July 9th comment from 5 years ago, I asked four rhetorical questions. I assume you are honing in on the 3rd and saying that my argument revolves around just that one question, when I personally feel it's the least important of the four. But yes I guess it's implying that perhaps we should invest less effort and attention in to prolonging or improving the lives of murderers and terrorists etc than we should invest in making society safe and pleasant for everyone else, but, like I said, this is way waaaay down my list of reasons. My other stronger (so far unrefuted) reasons are much better. And I wasn't even really making an argument I was asking a question.

I don't believe in retributive justice. All that being said the comment is five years old and sometimes my views on an issue evolve over the years.

because they're not in a position to.

Oh, that's a relief. Then the rest of the world constantly bitching about the US meddling in their affairs or setting the tone for international politics should stop any day now... and of course they'll also stop complaining whenever the US decides to intervene anywhere (Libya), or when they don't (Syria). Because they're no longer in a position to act unlike the entire rest of the world and so get judged based on every decision and indecision by the gallery of masturbatory spectators and has-been tyrants. good to hear.

You don't make sense Kalbahamut.

Makes perfect sense to me. Would you like me to explain something?

The problem is plenty of innocent people have been executed, but America only realises it after they've done it. Clearly the justice system isn't perfect so execution should happen.

If someone is forced to live through seeing 10, 20, 30, 60 years of their life wasted away in prison where they are deprived of liberty, subject to rape, abuse, whatever... this is worse than killing them. Death does not hurt the person you kill. Once you are dead... I promise you won't give a crap anymore. It only hurts surviving loved ones. But imprisonment is likely worse as the family can't move on. Imprisonment actually harms the individual incarcerated. The death penalty shouldn't be seen as a punishment. Remove our silly and illogical fear of death, and it's not. It should be seen as acknowledging that an individual has no value to, or hope or returning and playing a role in, society. And that there's no point prolonging such a person's life.

In the meantime, yes, please, shine a bright spotlight on all the inadequacies of the justice system. Those need to be addressed. But an imperfect justice system is not a good argument against the death penalty for the reasons above.

I'm sorry, but Ryan's statement above is just completely bonkers. To repeat what he said: "An imperfect justice system is not a good argument against the death penalty". That is making excuses for a system that allows for the judicial killing of people for a crime they did not commit. Everyone has the right not to be killed for something they didn't do, and countries that allow judicial killing will always kill a proportion of people who did not do what they were accused of.

It's not at all bonkers if you're smart enough to understand the point. How can you be nuts enough to think that I am making excuses for killing people for a crime they didn't commit? THAT is bonkers.

In imperfect justice system is NOT a good argument against the death penalty. YES. That is worth repeating. It may seem counter intuitive. But that's because your intuition is terrible.

I'll try to sum up my many long arguments here. Please try to keep up. If the justice system is bad, this is a good argument for improving the justice system. A person falsely convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment is not a good outcome. Life imprisonment is not better than execution. Taking away the sentence of execution does nothing to fix what's wrong with the justice system, if there is indeed a problem. And in the USA, people sentenced to death actually get BETTER access to justice than anyone else.

I do make less sense now that the comments I was responding to are gone. I think drunken gandalf's, in this case.

Disney movie nonsense.

Right, gandalf. God, you're nuts. Let's pick one case completely at random. Executions in 2014. Top of the list I see some guy Michael Wilson. Never heard of him before. Look up the case... apparently he and his friends were planning to rob a store. The clerk was worried about it and alerted police. This was something they thought out, completely premeditated, no "passion." Wilson and his friends entered the store, dragged an innocent man into the cooler, bound him, and beat him to death with a baseball bat striking him 54 times as he was pleading for mercy. They had trouble getting the safe open, so one of the robbers put on the victim's uniform and manned the cash register to avoid arousing suspicion, while the victim lay dying in a pool of blood for the duration. The robbers then took their money and went to buy some new Nike tennis shoes which the police found them with when they were apprehended. These people have no right to live. Killing them is justice.

Yet according to you, carrying out the perfectly just and deserved sentence against Wilson is worse than what Wilson did to the innocent man in the store.

Also one more thing... there was one guy on the list who had 30 years between receiving his death sentence and actually having it carried out. Charming and probably misunderstood "I will beat you to death with a bat for a pair of Nikes" Wilson had 16. During that whole time they are living for free in facilities with libraries, gyms, cable TV, 3 square meals a day, all paid for by the tax payer, and also they have access to the legal system and are able to make multiple appeals to their sentence if they wish, most of them do, which is part of why it can take 30 years to carry out the sentence.

But... yeah... that's more terrible a crime than straight up cold blooded murder.

I believe the point of punishment should not be revenge, but rather protection of the society from criminals and helping the offender realize his mistake whenever possible. Justice simply cannot be the reason to kill somebody. A person's behaviour is not only his responsibility, but it is related to the influence of society as a whole. If we were to kill someone for their criminal acts, we might as well kill his family, or maybe his schoolmates, or maybe kill ourselves, for not treating that person as we should have. Or maybe it's just his own evil mind. Maybe. But we can never be sure. We should not judge someone's acts to define his quality as a human being, as if we were gods. We just can't, and if we think we can, we're being arrogant to the extent that we become criminals ourselves.

george, that makes sense. But what if all we're doing is acknowledging that a person has no value at all to society, that allowing him to reenter society poses a great danger, and that keeping him locked inside a box forever is neither more just, nor more civilized, nor really any different than ending said person's life in a completely humane way such as lethal injection? No pain, no suffering, no more an act of revenge than a doctor cutting a tumor out of someone's brain is getting revenge against cancer.

I see your point there, but would the death penalty really be more humane? I agree it is a physically less damaging course of action for someone to be killed through, say, a lethal injection, than to be imprisoned for life, but what about the emotional toll this takes? If subjecting a person, especially a criminal in a disturbed state of mind, to the certainty of imminent death isn't the most emotionally and mentally destructive experience they could have, then what is? At least life imprisonment gives criminals a chance of rethinking their actions and finding some peace with themselves and other people. Faint though this chance may be, I think it again comes down to our inability to conclusively judge a human being's qualities.

If that's what they're worried about then why go to such pains to prevent prison inmates from committing suicide? People these days just have this weird obsession with keeping everyone alive as long as possible, whether there's good reason to or not.

Kalbahamut, beside your "nah, you stupid" worthy arguments that just shows how insecure you are about your ideas, please aknowledge that in California a death sentence cost 10 times more to the state than a life-long sentence. You look way more interesting and accurate on subjects you actually know about.

Cedo, justice shouldn't have a price. If you think that Kalbahamut is immoral for believing in the death penalty, then you should DEFINITELY know that not wanting to serve justice because it 'costs too much' is just as bad. Most of those given the death penalty premeditated their attacks, and are given ample time to prove their innocence. If they still can't do it, then isn't the justice system functioning as it should?

Cedo, that is a terrible, inhumane, *barbaric* argument. The ONLY reason that people can say that the death penalty is MORE expensive than life imprisonment is because people on death row have greater access to the appeals process, they go to court more and have more access to lawyers. Their cases are fully vetted and they are given every chance possible to prove their innocence and have their convictions overturned. The increased cost you cite is ALL about court costs. What did you think it was? The price of needles?

So... basically what you are saying is that everyone who is convicted of a crime... lock 'em up and throw away the key!! Because it saves money. Yeah, that's very civilized of you.

I'm not really "against" the death penalty when used properly, but if the reason it's more expensive is because of the court costs, that should absolutely be considered a factor. I don't ever want a system in place where people who receive the death penalty don't have the ability to appeal. Those things are in place because it helps make a wrongful conviction less likely, and wrongful convictions should be avoided at all costs. That being said, I think Kal is right that some people place too much importance on everyone living as long as they possibly can, even if that person is a violent criminal.

A violent criminal... or an elderly person with a terminal disease who wants to die, or basically a collection of unfeeling cells like a blastocyst, or a braindead vegetable (see Terry Schiavo). Humans in Western civilization have a very perverted sense of the value of life. I think it stems from their own irrational fear of death. Life is not in and of itself valuable. Death is not the worst thing imaginable, or even necessarily objectively bad. This is hard or impossible for most Westerners to wrap their heads around.

When it comes to end of life decisions, people need to learn there comes a point when it is no longer prolonging life, but prolonging death. When my time comes I hope my family lets me go with dignity. I'd rather they hang on to fond memories than a frail body.

Agree with kalbahamut

@kal - you've posted quite a bit here and I might not be able to respond to it all. While it is true that executions happening in the US now are generally less bad than the original murder, I still don't think you are at all right to say that "killing them is justice". No, it is not. It is revenge. On hearing that story emotional responses are triggered that make people angry enough to want those people executed. This is too subjective to be real justice. The fact that these people had to wait a long time to be executed is not a point in your favour. At the very best it has no relevance whatsoever. Lethal injections are not a humane way of killing people, that is a ridiculous and extremely dangerous falsehood. There really is no way of doing it humanely unless the person is already suffering (e.g. from a terminal illness) but more humane methods (counterintuitively) probably include beheading and firing squad.

Also death is absolutely not an irrational fear. I challenge you to name one fear that is more rational than the fear of death and justify it in a way that I could not use to justify the fear of death. Of course we fear death. Evolution quickly gets rid of any organism that does not. It is true to say that death is not objectively bad, but this is much more abstract (when applied to the death of humans) than the question of whether governments should kill people it is in charge of. It is clear to me that the answer to that is no.

I'm not and never was arguing for revenge. I think I've stated clearly here, multiple times, that I do not believe that the death penalty should be used as punishment against criminals whose crimes were especially bad. (but I forgive you if you missed it, since you're right, there has been a lot said in the comments here)

On the contrary I believe that free will is an illusion and that a punitive criminal justice system does not make any sense. I believe any criminal justice system should be a system that attempts to correct bad behavior, not punish it. But some criminals are irredeemable. Their continued existence will only cause pain to themselves and to others. Since I do not fetishize the prolongation of life, humanely ending these criminals' lives to permanently remove them from the world that their existing in would only cause further suffering is, I believe, the only civilized and humane thing to do.

Fear of death is irrational because once you are dead you will feel no pain, you will experience no suffering, it will be exactly as bad as the time before you were born.

Fear of pain, public speaking, imprisonment, etc is all far more rational. These things can and do cause mental anguish in people and that is very unpleasant. Being dead is not unpleasant at all. We fear it, yes, and this fear is probably in our DNA, but that does not make it rational. Any more than cats jumping in panic when they turn around and see a cucumber on the floor behind them is rational. It might be instinctual, natural, normal, common, or understandable - but that doesn't make it rational.

I know you say you are not arguing for revenge, but when you say that certain people "deserve" to be executed or that they have no "right" to live, it is difficult to imagine what you are appealing to other than a desire for revenge. I know that you are saying "free will is an illusion" as if that means any specific action should be taken, but to me it is irrelevant whether or not free will is an illusion because even if it wasn't that wouldn't mean I would think retribution was the purpose of punishment. I don't know that there necessarily are any criminals who are irredeemable, and I don't think that it is possible to say whether or not their continued existence will "only" cause pain. I would personally much rather exist than not exist, even if the interactions I had were minimal. Then you said that killing the criminals was the only humane and civilised thing to do. "Civilised" isn't a term that I think really means anything, but I can say that executions as they occur in the USA

are not humane. And perhaps more to the point than anything I've said so far, they are not motivated by any of the things you are talking about, or at least the people voting for them are not. They are motivated by a desire for revenge, deterrent and to some extent by the "don't mess with Texas" ideology that amounts to the same thing as the national chauvinism you have criticised as a reason for people to reject the death penalty.

As for the thing about death being an irrational fear, I do sort of get what you mean about "rational" meaning something different to what people have evolved to do. But it is difficult at this point to define exactly what is rational. The fear of pain is a good example, as your reason for why it is a rational fear is that it is "very unpleasant". The same could be said of almost anything, including death (the experience of being dead wouldn't be unpleasant because it is nonexistent, but the fact that you won't get to do anything again is for many people unpleasant). Imprisonment is probably also a good example, but public speaking is not because if you do it you soon get used to it and the experience of worrying about it is probably worse than actually just doing it.

"when you say that certain people "deserve" to be executed or that they have no "right" to live, it is difficult to imagine what you are appealing to other than a desire for revenge."

If that's true then the problem is with your imagination. You are projecting your own sentiments on me. A cancerous tumor doesn't have a right to grow inside of my body. If it's causing harm to me, I'll get someone to cut it out. I'm not seeking revenge against the tumor. I'm identifying a problem and dealing with it.

"I know that you are saying "free will is an illusion" as if that means any specific action should be taken, but to me it is irrelevant

It's extraordinarily relevant. If free will is NOT an illusion, then retributive justice can actually make sense. If people are capable of making choices other than the choices that they make, then it could be argued that they deserve punishment for making bad choices. But if you recognize that people only seem to make choices, and in reality they act the only way that it is possible for them to act, then you can understand that retributive justice makes no sense. In the same way that if a rabid dog is attacking people, you're not angry at the dog, but you may decide to have the dog put down. In the same way that if you are attacked by a bear, you might take precautions against a future attack but you're not angry at the bear. It's just being a bear.

There are several different reasons for punishment in criminal justice. Instead of going in to them all here's a link that briefly explains many. I don't believe in retributive justice, though in the American system and in virtually all other justice systems in the world, retributive justice is a major component of the law. I believe the other reasons given are all valid, though.

I don't see how executions in the USA are inhumane and the arguments I've read for why they are not are pretty stupid and desperate.

I agree that many of those people voting for the death penalty believe in retributive justice. It's my opinion that they are ignorant. So what? Many people voting for sending aid to starving orphans do so because they believe that an invisible man in the sky wants them to do kind things for other people. Is that a good reason to not help starving orphans?

I've never heard a compelling argument for why to be alive is better than to be dead, or for existence being preferable to non-existence. Every argument I've ever seen on this subject is nonsense; emotional and irrational, based on feelings without reason.

I understand why evolution selects for a fear of death.

I can see why death is considered bad, as it affects the still-living.

I can see why societies would outlaw murder, even against people that nobody is going to miss.

And yes if you are alive and conscious it's likely that you would prefer to stay that way, it's in your genetic programming to prefer this. But that doesn't mean you would feel the same way once you are dead.

Humans have evolved to want to remain alive, therefore they want to argue that life is good somehow. Acknowledging this non-sequitur is actually much closer to the center of my argument than any desire to punish wrong-doers.

Gandalf above was arguing that to execute a convicted criminal is a worse crime than any committed by those being executed. Those comments are gone now.

you missed tajikistan

It has nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity. A knowledge of the history of medicine relating to Medieval Europe should convince you of this. I actually think it comes from the question of how to run a country and/or the world when people realised that Christianity wasn't the way to do it. Doesn't Christianity say that you go to heaven when you die anyway? (as long as you shifted all your original sin onto Jesus by believing in him). If so what is the point in prolonging life? The sanctity of life is basically an example of where a religion has claimed something for its own that it didn't invent. The idea that killing people is bad, or that it a sad when someone dies, has been around far longer than religion.

of course it has. But the meme that all life is sacred (no matter what, even to the point of including dangerous psychopathic murderers, elderly people with no quality of life whatsoever, people who *want* to commit suicide but by law are not allowed to, brain dead vegetables like Terry Schiavo, or unthinking globs of cells like fertilized human ovums) is something that has caught on in the Judeo-Christian world, and the defense of these values in that world is almost always dressed up in Christian theology. Therefore, this meme has very much become part of contemporary Christian belief. Of course beliefs and religions both change over time.

A lot of arguments that people make if they are Christian are dressed up as Christian theology, particularly if they are about the most basic or most fundamental ideas, as it is quite hard to argue something with somebody who disagrees with all of the steps you used to reach a conclusion. Also lots of ideas that people refer to look like Christian theology even if they can be reasonably defined and be a useful concept without it (an example of this is "free will" - considered to be a God-given ability by Christian theology but also something that can be used as an assumption to base decisions on, even if the universe is algorithmically deterministic). The point is that virtually all of the arguments I think you are referring to can be "translated" (i.e. edited slightly) to produce an atheistic argument that works.

So what if they can? That doesn't change the fact that these memes first evolved out of a Judeo-Christian culture and tradition. And that the same memes, in the same form, do not exist in Japan.

which was after 1846

Philippines was also one of my first guesses. In fact, I was so certain it should be here that I typed it a couple of times to make sure I didn't make a typo. And then I realized the point you make, that it's all out of court and without prosecution... And then there are people who say that their president is not so bad, because he builds good infrastructure.

There are also many Filipinos who support all the extrajudicial killings and believe Duterte is "tough" and going to clean up crime and corruption etc, the image he wants to project has taken hold strongly with most of the poor and uneducated, which is most of the country.

I couldn't disagree more. How much does it cost to try and convict someone of murder, then keep them in prison for life? How much was saved because the death penalty was an option, but a plea deal was reached to avoid the death penalty, thereby sparing the government a costly trial?

It can also save money though, because it is an important bargaining chip for prosecutors. If you have a first-degree murder case with strong evidence of the defendant's guilt, you need the threat of the death penalty to convince a defendant to plead guilty and accept a prison sentence, thereby sparing the expense of a costly murder trial. Without that element, there is no reason for the defendant to plead, because he's likely to face 25-to-life if he he pleads or 25-to-life if he's convicted. He may as well just go to trial. And trials, especially murder trials, can be very expensive.

the money-saving argument is in my opinion pretty barbaric and somewhat asinine. The only reason those on death row cost more is because they are given greater access to the appeals process. If you were stuck in prison for life you wouldn't want to have the same chance to appeal the sentence?

Apparently some criminals actually fear being executed/for their own lives.

I think it's money well-spent. There are plenty other ridiculous things I'd vote to cut over executing people who tear down a society.

Some people only speak one language. Society must be willing to talk to them in a way they understand.

So what you are saying is that you don't understand what execution means. And keep in mind this is coming from someone (canadry) who is very pro-Russia and believes that the USSR, Communist China, North Korea, Pol "killing fields" Pot's Cambodia and Ethiopia under the Derg were all really "cool" countries. see for yourself