Should the Death Penalty be banned in the United States?

I agree with the akannan's observation that evidence is everything. I find that when I hear someone talking about whether or not we should abolish the death penalty, I tend either to shake my head or nod it, based on what they're saying and how it matches up with my beliefs. People tend not to use evidence in their arguments about moral issues. If they did, at least some of our practices would change quite a bit and a lot of our biases might possibly even disappear.

With all due respect to bullgatortail, for example, who wrote a solid post outlining his views, I find myself shaking my head several times over. If we want to argue about whether or not executions save taxpayer money (and, for the purposes of argument, don't touch the thorny issue about equating lives with money), we would really need to be able to compare what it costs to execute a person legally (including the costs of the many court decisions, appeals, etc.) versus what it costs to keep that person alive. If we're talking about overcrowding, we might need to see numbers on how many years convicts tend to wait on death row and what percentage of the overall prison population they make up.

My views about a number of social issues (health care, illegal drug control, etc.) were strongly shaped by the year that I lived with German families as a high school exchange student and the years I later spent living and working there. I would be interested in hearing discussions of how many countries at our level of economic and educational development have the death penalty on the books and how many of those countries frequently use it.