KANSAS VIEWS ON DEATH PENALTY, WIND POWER, HUNGER, SEAT BELTS

Death penalty -- Gov. Mark Parkinson revealed an interesting perspective on the state's death penalty when he said he would be open to re-evaluating it. As a state senator, Parkinson helped draft the law, which Kansas enacted in 1994. He said the purpose was to give murder defendants an incentive to plead guilty for a prison sentence without possibility of parole for 40 years. If the death penalty achieves that, it could be one benefit of it. But maybe it still doesn't make it good justice. Maybe it isn't entirely right to use the threat of execution to pressure a defendant into a plea bargain. This much we know: Life in prison is the best, most appropriate, conscientious -- and, apparently, cheapest -- punishment for murder. We should not need the death penalty to deliver that sentence. It should be the standard punishment, period.-- Hutchinson News