The death penalty is not a deterrent to future criminals.
As an aside, over the weekend I watched Zodiac on DVD. The future Ms. Gekko and I were talking about other serial killers and their nicknames and I couldn't remember the nickname for Richard Ramirez the LA serial killer from the 80's.
So I did a Wikipedia search on old Richard Ramirez. His nickname was the Night Stalker and he was sentenced to death in 1989.
You'd probably think little Richard was toes up by now given that it's all of 18 years since his death sentence. You'd be wrong.
On August 7, 2006 his first round of state appeals ended unsuccessfully when the California Supreme Court upheld his convictions and death sentence.
First round?. Little Ricky is going to die of Alzheimer's before he gets the needle.
When this guy finally gets the needle people are going to say "who's he?" They won't have any memory of the horrific crimes he committed in the early 1980's and criminals won't be able to see their criminal role models bite the dust.
When a criminal knows that he's got a good 20-30 years of life in prison before he dies.... of natural causes, I'm guessing that the death penalty is definitely not a deterrent.
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