While applaud­ing a life-sen­tence plea bar­gain arranged by Palm Beach County’s State Attorney in an espe­cial­ly heinous mur­der, the Palm Beach Post said the state had ​“forfeit[ed] the moral stand­ing to exe­cute any­one else.”

The State Attorney said that he agreed to let the defen­dant plead guilty to killing 5 peo­ple because the life-with­out-parole sent­nece will bring final­i­ty. The Post not­ed: ​“The state saves not only the cost of a tri­al; the vic­tims’ rel­a­tives — who sup­port­ed the deal — do not have to relive the hor­ror. The state will save more by avoid­ing years of appeals; all cred­i­ble research shows that incar­cer­a­tion is far cheap­er than lit­i­ga­tion. Most impor­tant, [the defen­dant] nev­er again will threat­en the pub­lic.”
…
​“But,” the paper fur­ther stat­ed, “[i]t is impos­si­ble to craft a law that reserves cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for only a cer­tain class of crim­i­nal. Because Florida and the 37 oth­er states where the death penal­ty is legal won’t accept that fact, gov­ern­ments waste untold mil­lions each year on post-con­vic­tion appeals over whether the facts of the case sup­port the ulti­mate pun­ish­ment.”
(Palm Beach Post Editorial, December 16, 2004). See Editorials and New Voices. See also Victims, and Costs.

Tags
Citation Guide