I agree with lil - this is about the fact that a death penalty will mean endless rounds of appeals and deny them closure. Could be worse - at least it's a federal case. The Feds executed John Allan Mohammed in 7 years and Tim McVeigh in 4. By way of comparison, California hasn't executed anyone since 2006... and has 745 inmates on Death Row. A federal inmate costs about $28k/year to incarcerate, and about $1.3m to execute. Break-even is 46 years. Add the 5 or so he'll be incarcerated prior to execution and he's gotta make it to 77 or so before the execution is the money-saving option. Those are the bare statistics. From an ethical standpoint? http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/Capital_punishment.PNG Put it this way: we're not keeping good company.