[HungLikeJesus]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

... From a moral standpoint, I don't have a problem executing the guilty. Not in the slightest. But I'm against the death penalty, not only because it leaves room for horrendous errors like these, but because it ends up costing a bajillion times more than just locking them away for life with no chance for parole.

But that's a bajillion dollars injected into the local economy.

Plus, there's this:

Claude Jones was no saint. Born in Houston in 1940, he was arrested numerous times and spent three stints in prison on robbery, assault and theft charges. While serving an eight-year sentence in a Kansas prison, Jones allegedly doused another inmate with lighter fluid and set him on fire. But Jones wasn’t executed for his previous crimes. He was put to death for what allegedly happened on the afternoon of Nov. 14, 1989.


Jones and an accomplice named Kerry Daniel Dixon pulled into Zell’s liquor store in the East Texas town of Point Blank, about 80 miles northeast of Houston. They had a .357 magnum revolver given to them by a third man, Timothy Jordan.


Either Jones or Dixon remained in the pickup truck, while the other went inside and shot the store’s owner, 44-year-old Allen Hilzendager, three times and made off with several hundred dollars from the cash register.