Does money have no place in any life/death debate?
Do readers think a respectable newspaper would boldly assert in an editorial that money has no place in the health care debate? Or in the debate over the war in Iraq? I certainly would view such assertions to be misguided, which is why I find foolish this local editorial, headlined “Our view: Money has no place in death penalty debate.” Here are excerpts:
Since capital punishment was re-instated in Indiana in 1977, 94 men and women have been sentenced to death. Of those, 19 convicted murderers have been executed. Five more committed suicide, died of natural causes or were killed by other prisoners. Others saw their sentences commuted through the appeals process. Fourteen more await their punishment on Death Row, every facet of each and every case weighed heavily prior to sentencing.
The same diligence must be given in the upcoming Jay County trials of five men and women accused of luring Shawn Buckner to a house where he was brutally beaten before being stabbed in a rural cornfield and later buried in a shallow grave near Dunkirk.
Jay County Prosecutor Robert Clamme said earlier this week — just eight days after the crime — that he did not believe he would seek the death penalty. Clamme declined to discuss his reasoning, but local prosecutors point toward the significant cost involved in death penalty cases as the most likely answer.
There are plenty of legitimate arguments both in favor of and against capital punishment that get at the real heart of the issue, that frankly, makes the cost issue ridiculous by comparison. We’re talking about the taking of a human life, not whether or not to purchase a new courthouse. To bring money into the equation only adds to the argument that capital punishment is unjust….
Surely, this was not what legislators intended when the death penalty was re-instated, or what the family of Shawn Buckner deserves. Whether the county in which he lived and died is fiscally sound shouldn’t play into the punishment the courts decide his attackers deserve.
Jay County is just a dot on the map in greater Indiana, but the issue has state-wide ramifications. And as fortunate as East Central Indiana is with a low murder rate, surely this won’t be the only time the issue is called into question, especially as property tax freezes deplete local resources.
It’s time for discussion on a state-wide level, with a state-wide solution. Buckner was just one victim, but his life was sacred. His death shouldn’t be diminished by finances.
I find ridiculous anyone who advocates a state-wide public policy position to claim that cost is an entirely inappropriate consideration in a debate. Put simply, it costs millions of dollars for a state to weigh heavily “every facet of each and every case,” and thus the death penalty is always going to be an expensive enterprise. Unless and until taxpayers promise never to complain about tax increases, I find it badly misguided and quite dangerous to assert that cost issues are off the table in a debate over capital punishment.
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