State government will be leaner next year: the going estimate is that about 100 jobs will disappear from a work force of close to 27,000. But one potential growth area is the business of the death penalty. Gov. Butch Otter's proposed 2009-10 budget creates about three full-time attorney's positions in the state's appellate public defender's office. This is the agency assigned to defend death-row inmates. ... To put this in context, the 2009-10 budget creates only 8.12 full-time positions. So more than a third of the new positions would go toward a capital punishment infrastructure — in a state that has executed exactly one inmate in the past half century/Kevin Richert, Idaho Statesman. More here.

Question (from Kevin Richert): Can somebody argue for the efficacy of the death penalty?