Until executions can be carried out within 3 years of pronouncement,instead of the 12-20 years it now take, I suggest life without parole become the SOP.
By the time executions are carried out these days, a good many of the victims families are dead and gone or other life changes compel them to change their minds as to wanting death being carried out against the condemned.
Many condemned certainly need killing but why wait until the condemned are more likely to die of natural causes?
I'm pro death penalty but only if it occurs within a short period of time after the exhaustion of one designated appellate process specifically created to handle death penalty appeals.
I too think of life with no possibility of parole is preferable to the 10-25 year long process we often have now. I think for many families, the constant reminder of their tragedy as the endless appeals play on and on, better to stick the convict in a cell and forget about them.
The current process stinks for a bunch of reasons, its cruel to the family of the victim, more expensive than incarceration, so prolonged that it looses any deterrent value it might have and often brings added notoriety to the criminals so sentenced. Add to that that its application often has a political component.
