By JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG
Feb. 28, 2009
It was a gruesome crime: A 19-year-old college student, abducted, then raped and tortured, before her killer strangled her and dumped her body in a field. It took a Kansas jury earlier this month only four hours to decide Jodi Sanderholm's attacker, Justin Thurber, deserved the ultimate penalty of death.
For Sanderholm's family, the death sentence was deserved."This is a great deterrent to anyone who thinks about doing a crime like this," her father, Brian, said after the sentencing.But in the future, killers like Thurber could get a reprieve because of the nation's economic crisis. Kansas lawmakers now are weighing whether it's just too expensive to put people to death.
The average death penalty case costs the state of Kansas $1.26 million, compared to $740,000 for life in prison.The Kansas judiciary committee this week spent two days debating whether the state should abolish the death penalty to save money--and instead send people like Thurber to prison for life.
Feb. 28, 2009
It was a gruesome crime: A 19-year-old college student, abducted, then raped and tortured, before her killer strangled her and dumped her body in a field. It took a Kansas jury earlier this month only four hours to decide Jodi Sanderholm's attacker, Justin Thurber, deserved the ultimate penalty of death.
For Sanderholm's family, the death sentence was deserved."This is a great deterrent to anyone who thinks about doing a crime like this," her father, Brian, said after the sentencing.But in the future, killers like Thurber could get a reprieve because of the nation's economic crisis. Kansas lawmakers now are weighing whether it's just too expensive to put people to death.
The average death penalty case costs the state of Kansas $1.26 million, compared to $740,000 for life in prison.The Kansas judiciary committee this week spent two days debating whether the state should abolish the death penalty to save money--and instead send people like Thurber to prison for life.
