KS Senate takes up repeal of death penalty... stay tuned

The victims didn't get a choice of life in prison or death. You can be sure if those were their only choices, they would have taken life in prison.

Don't let these scums have an opportunity denied their victims. Fry 'em.

An a side note, the Kansas attorney from "In Cold Blood" fame stated in an article that more crimes should be considered capital crimes. I agree.

If you wished, you could make the death penalty much cheaper than life without parole.

Obvious solution: Improve the system.

Virginia executes in 5-7 years. 65% of those sentenced to death have been executed. Only 15% of their death penalty cases are overturned. The national averages are 11 years, 14% and 36%, respectively.

With the high costs of long term imprisonment, a true life sentence will be more expensive than such a death penalty protocol.

In additon, Sen. McGuinn, if you properly inserted these numbers into your cost analysis, the death penalty in Kansas, today, is very likley less expensive than a life sentnece:

Geriatric care: Most cost studies exclude geriatric care, recently found to be $60,000-$90,000/inmate/yr., a significant omission from life sentence costs. Prisoners are often found to be geriatric at relatively young ages, 50-55, because of lifestyle.

Plea Bargain to life: ONLY the presence of the death penalty allows for a plea bargain to a maximum life sentence. Such plea cost benefit, estimated at $500,000 to $1 million/case, accrues as a cost benefit/credit to the death penalty. I am aware of no study which includes this.

The cost of death row: If you are spending more money for death row, then get rid of it. Missouri doesn't have one.

Senator Derek Schmidt, the snake who took big money from, then tried to bring outlawed for-profit prisons to Kansas, has just removed the possibility of an up or down vote from the Kansas Senate. He had previously labored along with his scurrilous colleague, bunco artist and former representative Trish Kilpatrick to repeal the ban on these awful and dangerous prisons. She was later criminally convicted for theft. Kilpatrick probably had even more ethics violations than Phill Kline.

Schmidt badly wants to be Attorney General so we can expect more of this behavior from him. Derek's objections, had they a shred of legitimacy, could have been cleaned up by the House or a conference committee. He's using a parliamentary issue to place Kansas alongside the most bestial regimes in the world. Not one country in Western Europe has retained the death penalty. Some of the other stunts Schmidt has pulled included forcing anyone convicted of adultery to register as a sex offender in Kansas.

Senator Steve Abrams, who repeatedly covered up his colleague Connie Morris' thefts while he chaired the anti-evolution State Board of Education, loudly claims he's a "Christian." But he goes back to the pre-Christian Bronze Age "eye for an eye" system of vigilante vengeance.

Senator Susan Wagle, who also loudly claims to be "pro-life" shows her true colors when her blood lust gets an opportunity to boil to the surface. She is more worried about stem cell research than she is about killing a human being who in fact might be innocent.

Dozens of death row inmates have been exonerated in recent years. I know one, Ray Crone, who had never been in trouble in his life until he was convicted of a murder he had no knowledge of. It was only until a DNA test, administered reluctantly after he served ten years proved the crime was committed by a repeat convicted rapist.

A Rose Hill (near Wichita) man served
21 1/2 years for poisoning his children when it should have been obvious the babysitter did it. He was only taken off death row after Furman v. Georgia, which clarified due process conditions for murder suspects. The babysitter died while awaiting trial for killing the first of her two poisoned husbands.

I'm certain we should all trust Jeff Colyer, who lied about where he lived so he could run for an open seat. He financed his campaign largely out of his pocket and counted on lobbyists to pay him back. He's a doctor. He's apparently forgotten the "Do no harm principle." The great preponderance of U.S. physicians refuse to participate in such a barbaric medieval rite.

Thank goodness we have people such as Senator David Haley and others equally responsible and moral in our Legislature.

Ritual executions that cheapen all life, have no place in a civilized society. Shame on the opponents of this bill especially those named above.