And of course, once they are dead the chances that they might be shown to have been unjustly convicted diminishes greatly, which saves a lot of embarrassment as well as a lot of money.

True enough locking up innocent people for years isn't that much better than killing them. But I think the Birmingham Six and the Guildhall Four and all the other cases like that would confirm that it is preferable.

The American system of locking people up for years and then eventually killing them, when they are in many ways completely different people, appears to provide the worst of both worlds.