Rambling a bit here, but one of the problems with the death penalty in the USA is that it actually costs more to keep someone on death row than to incarcerate them for the rest of their natural life.
The average prisoner spends more than a decade on death row. Thus it's hardly surprising that natural causes have killed more condemned men than the chair, the rope, gas or lethal injection put together (I blame all those cheeseburgers and fried chicken meals*)
In that time the cost to the state of the legal rigmarole of appeal, counter-appeal and the like (according to a study by Duke University) runs to around $2 million more than it would cost simply to lock the bugger up and throw away the key.
And to those who say: "Just hang 'em quicker and don't let the lawyers get fat", think of all those who have successfully appealed from death row and have subsequently been found to have been innocent.
In the UK we have the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six to name just two cases (and the sad case of Timothy Evans, wrongly hanged for the murders at 10 Rillington Place), while in the USA you have the cases of Dennis Williams etc.
*PS...does anyone know if the condemned man can still ask for a last cigarette?
You can imagine the scene:
Warder - "Any last requests?"
Condemned man - "I could sure do with a smoke. Just one last drag, please..."
Warder - "No way, son. The Surgeon General has decreed that cigarettes are seriously detrimental to your health and, as we run a caring and compassionate regime here, we simply cannot allow you to smoke. Think of the harm you're doing to your body!"
Condemned man - "But what about 4,000 volts, or an armful of pethidine and potassium chloride? That's not exactly going to put a rosy glow on my cheeks, is it?"