Death Penalty Moratorium

As the various pro's and con's of capital punishment are debated there is one indisputable fact, though largely un noticed in these discussions, which makes it clear that we must put an end to the death penalty in the U.S.- There are so many condemned inmates on death row now, and so many more are arriving each year that we could never hope to execute them all. Exterminating the 3600 people presently on death row would require sustained mass executions such that would cause public sensibility to recoil in disgust. For example in one scenario we could "kill 'em all" within a year only if we killed 10 people a day, 7 days a week for well over the whole 52 weeks; while at the current pace it would take more than 36 years (based upon last years number of executions: 98). There is no conceivable, acceptable equation in between for exterminating the masses on death row that would not either be hopelessly impotent, or so shocking in the mass production of carnage that social conscience would soon come to abhor the death penalty as our European allies have. This call for an end to capital punishment is not based upon supposition that the practice is either right or wrong, rather it is based upon awareness that, despite the rhetoric, the reality is that the vast majority of death row inmates will die of old age rather than a lethal injection. Thus offering a new parameter to consider the concept of "cruel and unusual". At the same time taxpayers are spending approximately 3 million dollars per inmate to spend a lifetime on death row, while the estimated cost of a life sentence remains roughly half of that. Thus, a standardized life sentence (without parole) could save taxpayers about five and a half BILLION dollars which could be better used to empower law enforcement, or to build hospitals or schools. We, the undersigned, believe this to be true, and having placed our signatures here-in we call for an end to capital punishment in all 50 States