Is 65 years or more in prison a more severe punishment than the dealth penalty?

From Wikipedia: Opponents of the death penalty often state one or more of the following reasons as the basis for their opposition: the possibility of the execution of an innocent person; the lack of deterrence of violent crime; and opposition to the death penalty based on a moral or religious basis.

Supporters of the death penalty often state one or more of the following reasons as the basis for their support: the deterrence of violent crime; closure to the families and friends of the victim (in practice, the death penalty is used almost exclusively to punish convicted murderers); and the belief that a temporary prison sentence is not effective punishment for such an act.

In the United States of America, the use of capital punishment is generally accepted, with the conservative Republican Party in support of it, as well as most members of the varyingly centrist Democratic Party. The Green Party, a liberal third party, is opposed to its use. Recent polling indicated that well over half of the American population supports the death penalty as an appropriate punishment for murdering another individual.

The brutalizing effect, also known as the brutalization hypothesis, argues that the death penalty has a brutalizing or coarsening effect either upon society or those officials and jurors involved in a criminal justice system which imposes it. It is usually argued that this is because it sends out a message that it is acceptable to kill in some circumstances, or due to the societal disregard for the ‘sanctity of life’. An extension of this argument is that the brutalizing effect of the death penalty may even be responsible for increasing the number of murders in jurisdictions in which it is practiced.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_penalty