Is the death penalty too expensive? (Updated)

A favorite liberal tacticis to take something they disapprove of and make it prohibitively expensive.  They did it with nuclear power and they are doing it with the death penalty.  They’ve used the rather odd logic that it might be okay to kill criminals, but it would be cruel to hurt them while we are killing them.  Insanity, yet such arguments have met with much success in the courts. 

This issue arises in California with the news that California is is having to build a new death row to house all the convicts waiting for the courts to sort out how to kill them.   The obvious solution is to execute these folks instead of building a new facility for them.  But that solution somehow escapes the powers to be.  So, the question is, is the death penalty worth saving and, if so, how do we save it?

P.S.  I’m surprised this topic has gotten so little response and I’m curious why.  Is it because conservatives consider this battle already lost?  If so, why not just convert all death penalties to life in prison and get rid of death rows entirely?  For that matter, why not just get rid of the death rows anyway?  Why should prisoners subject to the death penalty be housed in a separate area to begin with?  True, some prisoners should be kept separate from the general prison population (for its protection or theirs) but that’s always true.  Shouldn’t that be evaluated on a case by case basis?