Strazdas said:
well, things like "insure your wife and her for money" tends to get around 8-9 years in my country. Id say 10 years sentence for a murder is fine. hence my comment that i think it should be harsh but not life. The point of a prison sentence is to fix someone so he would be useful for society later, not to tuck someone away never to be seen again. If your giving life sentences you may as well just do the capital punishment.
In your country a man who insures his wife and then murders her for the policy doesn't even get a decade? In the country where this law is being conceived, the point of prison is a combination of a desire to rehabilitate and also to enact retribution for the cost their crime incurred. So in the instance of taking someone's life, it isn't entirely unreasonable to charge the murderer with life. Usually only cold blooded intentional murderers would get that though. So I wouldn't expect to see anyone actually charged with life for this.
As for the death penalty, it actually costs the state more money to execute than to just keep feeding them. Besides, our death penalty process completely fails to do anything. According to the anti-capital punishment philosopher John Howard Yoder, if you're going to have capital punishment as a deterrent then it should be brutal and public, like a public hanging or firing squad. This hidden away in a room nonsense just isn't going to instill any kind of fear in anyone. However, there are many victims in the crime of murder who receive justice when the murderer is then killed. So the notion of retribution cannot be entirely thrown out.