Critique of " Death Penalty in Texas!"

In A.J’s Texas Justice Blog he comments about the death penalty in a posting on his blog. He states that the death penalty should be eliminated and argues that there is no significant effect on the crime rate with the death penalty in effect. He also specifically states that Texas has one of the highest death penalty percentages, and one of the harshest. I agree with AJ that the number death penalties here in Texas should be reduced; however I do not agree that it should be eliminated completely as he suggested in his blog. I believe the death penalty should remain as a form of punishment but on the same hand, limiting the number of people being tried for the death penalty. The cost to keep an inmate on death row is incredibly high and is hard to sum up, but rough estimates are around 1.2 million tax payer’s dollars! To an American resident this seems outrageous and a waste of resources that can be employed towards improving health, education and infrastructure.  The death penalty should only be used in extreme cases for individuals who have committed heinous crimes, such as mass murderers and serial killings. The average time an inmate waits on death row to be executed is approximately 10 years. Which means for ten years we are debating on whether or not to pursue with the death penalty in costly court cases. However AJ does a good job defending his argument by stating this statement “Death is one penalty which makes error irreversible and the chance of error is inescapable when based on human judgment”. He does a good job to persuade the reader towards anti-death penalty.