No sure, but since we are comparing the costs, I am also curious about the costs of maintaining infra required for and performing the executions.

The typical HN reader is more educated, logical and informed than an average random person.

If I may make that assumption, what's your uneducated guess on how those costs compare?

What's the possibility that the costs of maintaining infra required for and performing the executions are just noise compared to those to fully house, keep healthy as inmates shiv and injure each other and maintain the life of an adult who will never repay it?

> after reading the article seems like a no-brainer, CA is not executing anyone anyway

voters vote on emotion than logic and math

Cost of lifetime imprisonment is less than capital punishment.

I suspect that about 100,000,000 Americans could fix that problem.

This argument only really makes sense for summary executions. For real US executions, there are significant costs to carry out a death sentence. Drugs, reviews, appeals, protests, etc are all expensive.

Housing someone for the rest of their natural life is cheaper than the two decades or more of mandatory court appeals and processes that need to be completed before an execution can happen. Death penalty cases have a lot of these to try and prevent executing innocent people.

The state is usually paying for the prosecution and defense as well as the court staff in these hearings.

If you spent 30 seconds with a search engine you'd have an answer to this question. Here is an ELI5: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1v5wj73/...

We have prisons already dude

> and the costs to hold those prisoners for the rest of their lives? to feed them, to provide them a habitable bed, cleaning supplies, medical health as they age and start to need more care?

Relative to California's law enforcement and judicial budgets required to investigate, arrest, try and convict them in the first place? Irrelevant noise. That's just a silly argument.

(There's also the whole moral thing about "we should kill people because it's too expensive to keep them alive", but even so, the financial thing just doesn't logic.)

I believe that the death penalty is counter-intuitively more costly[1].

[1] https://ballotpedia.org/Fact_check/Is_the_death_penalty_more...

Indeed. But I believe it's also modern (like post 1976 I think when there were major reforms). On a global historical scale, the U.S. is a massive outlier in this area.

Probably a good thing considering (what I perceive to be) a rise in political violence that seems to push for and/or celebrate summary executions with little to no due process.

I don't think "whatever's cheapest" is a great foundation for a justice system.

> and the costs to hold those prisoners for the rest of their lives? to feed them, to provide them a habitable bed, cleaning supplies, medical health as they age and start to need more care?

Imagine using _just saving some money_ to justify the death of a person. What a country.

It's perfectly reasonable for a person to decide where to spend their tax dollars:

- provide housing, education and medical coverage to people who are trying their best to make a living

- support a person who has killed atleast one more person for reasons that a jury of 12 people found unreasonable

Money unfortunately is zero sum.

> It's perfectly reasonable for a person to decide where to spend their tax dollars

No, it's not. You don't get the right to audit where "your" dollars go. Where the government should better use EVERYBODY's money, sure. But when an USian says "I don't want MY tax dollars to be used in this", is usually because they'd rather apply a fast revenge against any criminal for any crime, not caring if the person is maybe innocent (and trusting their judgement magically will allow them to have perfect knowledge of culpability), or they just don't want those dollars they believe they have the right to audit go to something as, for instance, socialized health care, where "their" dollars accidentally could benefit someone with the wrong skin color.

The speed at which USians classify people they don't like in the "unworthy of human rights" category is truly frightening.

As others have said, the death penalty is actually more costly to the state than simply housing people in prison for life.

The US is also the only "first world" nation that still has the capital punishment.

Our justice system is flawed by bias and careerism (the same is true anywhere, and the US is no exception). The fact that innocent people sometimes exonerated for crimes years or decades later is reason enough to ban the death penalty forever, IMO. Every time an innocent person is put to death, that's horrible itself, but it also means the real offender is still out there somewhere. Even if it happens 1% of the time that's still dozens of people over the years.

I would rather let the worst criminals stay alive in prison if it means one innocent person isn't put to death so they can appeal their case.

Japan also has the death penalty. Being a U.S. ally since WW2 and a member of the G7 means it is both a first world country and a developed country.

This doesn't excuse the immorality of the death penalty.

Should the state implement a system where anyone sentenced to over X amount of years in prison is automatically executed? Should something like the potential value a person can provide to society be considered a mitigating factor in sentencing?