Ok...

Thank you Jason.  I agree with your point and this is the most compelling of the reasons to avoid punishment by death penalty; the opportunity to study the offender.

Kevin G. has a great point! Who give's a good gosh darn about what some sicko thinks?  Well, for a great majority of the TV and Newspaper watching world, we have a morbid facination with death, killing, murder and all those other awful words.  I too indulge in this visceral entertainment.  But more importantly, if you can place a crazed wacko in a box for an indeterminant amount of time and study them, this information might help us lead to a better understanding in what creates a criminal and help to prevent in the future.  A huge part of my job is making educated guesses about social/criminal violaters based on past behavior.  Certain behaviors, based on common psychological patterns can lead to finding services for folks so they can work out some of their emotional/social bugs before they lead to violent behavior.  Does it always work? Nope.  But based on studying juvenile and adult offenders and the huge amount of nationwide studies that we have available, we can hopefully stop some problems before they start.

The sicko-psychokiller is the goose that gives the golden egg.  If I have the choice between killing him/her off after years of expensive appeals and gag orders or putting him in an 8x8 room and making a longitudinal study of him/her over a lifetime, I'm taking my opportunity to study.  From each one, we are afforded patterns of behavior that may indicate future anti-social/violent behavior. 

With this model, they are afforded no freedom, no clemancy and their story is not allowed to end in whatever version of the afterlife we choose to provide them.  Their victims and the killers themselves become watchdogs for future victims.  They go from a life cut short to an eternity of protection for both the average joe and the developing killer. 

John Robinson may have killed a number of women and children in my community over the past decade. He is on trial as we speak in Johnson County.  I went to school with his kids and he went to my church when I was growing up.  It is alleged that he killed his victims after engaging in weird sadosexual practices and put some of them in 40 gallon barrels.  We may never know how he developed into such a beast, but I think we owe it to these women and their families to try to find out. I'm not worried about "saving" his life.  I'm worried about preventing future loss of life.

Richard Grissom killed three college age women back in the late 80's, again in Kansas City.  He's serving life sentences.  They never found any of his victims.  I worked with the father of one of them at a hardware store in KC.  If we kill Richard Grissom, we lessen our chances of ever finding this man's daughter.  Sure, we may accidentally come across her someday, but our chances are better if we keep working on this. 

So, I could go on and on and on about this but I'll save you my blathering on.  I respect everyone's views on this subject and your frustration with "Justice" is palpable.  If these victims were my kids and their killer's not my clients, yeah, I'd be ready to raise the black flag and start cutting throats.  But, my role is to protect and prevent and until I'm handed a gavel and a black robe, that will be my job.  I'm thankful I have the tools like psychological profiles and behavioral patterns in which to do my job.

Sincerely,

PRH