AL: Unusually long prison sentences

[surprise_i'm_armed]

C-dub:
The Cali LEO/Fire officials are going to charge the arsonists (if they can ID them)
with murder since 2 firefighters died during the recent large fires.

The 2 men had been supervising a large group of jail inmates who had been fighting
the fire. The 2 men left in a fire vehicle to determine an escape route for everyone.

Unfortunately it was a winding mountain road with heavy smoke and they drove off the
side of the cliff. They fell 800 feet and the fire truck landed upside down.

FYI. SIA.

[C-dub]

Oh yeah, I knew and agree that they should be charged with at least murder. I just didn't remember ever hearing that it had been bumped up to capital murder.

[Mithras61]

How much to keep them in prison for the rest of their lives? How much for execution?

So much for fiscal responsibility......I don't know if AL is a death penalty state or not, but if it is, why would they bother with sentences like that?

Generally accepted figures for the costs say that executing someone costs between 3x and 5x what imprisoning someone for life costs, although the costs are heavily front-loaded (court costs, predominantly).

The cost of imprisoning someone for life runs about $35K/year, and the court costs alone for the initial trial for a death penalty case run into the hundreds of thousands (typical cost is estimated at $200,000 per case) which doesn't include the numerous appeals and terms served before execution (often 10, 15 or 20 years before sentence is carried out), so the difference depends somewhat on how long someone lives after being imprisoned. The figures are based generally on an average of a 40-year life-span after imprisonment.