LordsFire
Internet Wizard
I don't really view it as even a problem with the court system. It should be difficult to sentence someone to death (I really don't want an innocent person to die), and the costs reflect this. Killing someone, even a horrible person, with the justification only being saving money, is wrong. People should be sentenced to death only because they earned that death.
And this scumbag fully earned his death sentence, and I don't think words exist to convey how much I hate him. There is a enormous line of people from even lefty Massachusetts who would line up to flip the switch on him. I'd hitchhike back home from Alabama if I was told this would give me a good chance at doing it.
The death penalty shouldn't be easy to achieve. Once it has been ruled though, there is no justification for twenty years tied up in appeals. Death penalty cases are rare enough that giving appeals to such convictions can be given a higher priority, and a hard limit on duration of time between conviction/sentencing and that sentencing being carried out, say 2 years, can be practically applied.
I'd say 1 year, but we'd need to make our legal system a lot less bogged down first.