On 1,000th execution since moratorium ended...

When I was in the 6th grade my teacher showed me a box of photos his dad had from when he was a news reporter. One was of one of the last hangings in Nevada, taken far away up on a hill, because there were what 50,000 people there to see the large "tripod" (so I remember it as) presumably the man was hung from. He related people used to travel by train for days and days to get to them, perhaps some in protest, others as part of the social circumstances. It looked like Needles, NV along Route 66, perhaps. Another photo was alarming and disturbing. His father, the reporter, was a witness to the first (?) woman executed on the electric chair in the state of Illinois. No pictures were to be taken, but he had rigged a small camera to his calf, under his trousers, and at the appropriate time, lifted the pants leg to snap the photo, which also had to be retouched a bit, I could see the pencil marking on some of it. It appeared on the front page of the "Chicago Sun" newspaper the next day. I think he may not have been invited back, I imagine. I read in death penalty cases another scale of wages and salaries are used. The estimate I read a number of years ago now, was about $4 million dollars, where everyone gets paid more perhaps to assuage their contact with the trial. Let's see, at $4 million X 1000 = $4 billion dollars we've redistributed to ourselves over someone else's tragedies, and in some cases not even the right people were punished. It seems to me, a more just punishment, life in prison, and cheaper too!