Transcript
Alabama suffocated a man to death in a gas chamber tonight after starving him so he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit as they did it. And this was deemed perfectly legal by multiple courts in the vaunted American legal system.
That’s what happens when you value institutions over people.
Link for more info: https://www.reuters.com/legal/alabama-prepares-carry-out-first-execution-by-nitrogen-asphyxiation-2024-01-25/
According to this, as of 2015, the cost to incarcerate a man for 1 year in Alabama was $14,780.
As we all know, costs have skyrocketed since 2015, but let’s be ultra, ultra generous & say incarceration costs were a flat $10K/yr until 2014. 25 years at $10K/yr, $250K.
Let’s pretend inflation somehow never happened, 2015 - 2023, 9 years at $14,780. $133,020.
$133,020 + $250,000 = $383,020.
Inmate at one time requested firing squad, and death is death, so let’s say the bullet cost $2. You allocate an additional $4,998 for staff to perform firing squad duties, party balloons, party hats, and confetti. $5K & 5 mins…vs. 35 years & $383K++++, only to end with a more expensive & contrived execution style, more suffering, and the exact same end result. Death is death.
So about a million dollars, or 5 times cheaper than the median cost of the death penalty.
The median cost of a death penalty is $1,250,000
Even without your estimating and looking up the actual numbers — actual cost of lifetime incarceration is 800k, so in real life it’s only twice as expensive to execute someone. Also the equivalent of about 3-4 years salary of a corporate Director or VP
And that’s not even considering that incarceration has fringe benefits too. Through study, analysis, therapy and statistics we can learn how to prevent tragedy in future — not the case with execution.
You’re missing all of the lawyers fees to get to stop the execution.