Delaware Politics and Sussex County Angel have posts up (it is actually the same post by blogger Angel Clark) arguing for the morality of the death penalty in Delaware. But Angel Clark does not argue morality. She argues the fiscal aspect of the death penalty.
Despite its controversy, the death penalty is still legal in Delaware. [..] Since 1991 there have been 14 legal executions in Delaware including the last hanging in the state (1996). The youngest of these was 27 at the time of death and each committed at least one murder. One particularly gruesome case was Brian Steckel. Steckel was executed in 2005 (the most recent legal execution in Delaware) on three counts of first degree murder. He raped and killed Sandra Lee Long and then set her on fire. After this he wrote letters to her mother gloating about his deeds. It cost approximately $66 a day to incarcerate this creature (I will not call him a man). That’s $24,090 a year. Despite the “immorality” people claim are associated with legal executions, I consider it to be more immoral to the mother of Sandra Lee Long to force her to pay to keep Steckel alive.
Um, what? One would expect a post on the morality of the use of the death penalty, whether here in Delaware, or elsewhere throughout the country, that we at least talk about the morality of death penalty itself. Is it right for society to kill, when it is quite clear in both the new and the old Testament that killing is a sin and immoral. Is it right for society to stoop to the level of the barbaric criminal and act in the same fashion (and Angel does talk about this, saying lethal injection is clearly not as barbaric as bludgeoning someone to death, and that is true, but both have the same end result, which is the real issue).
I am agnostic when it comes to the death penalty. I think killing is wrong, whether the state or a criminal does it. But there are just some crimes for which no other punishment is appropriate. For example, serial killers and terrorists quilty of mass murder, like Osama bin Laden. But what I don’t think about is the cost of incarcerating the criminal, whether they are awaiting their punishment on death row or spending their life in prison. To base a decision to kill someone on financial considerations is what is immoral. Indeed, Angel overpays her hand here by saying the mother of the victim is being forced to pay to keep the killer of her daughter alive. Um, no she is not. Not out of her own pocket anyway. It is not like the State of Delaware has presented an invoice to the mother demanding payment. And if we start arguing that people should not have their tax dollars go to pay for things that they disagree with, well we will have a problem on our hands, because many people have a problem with paying for war, and still others have a problem with their money funding faith based organizations, and I could go on and on.