Execution more costly than life

To the editor:

As I've scanned recent letters, I've seen the growing concern about budget cuts for Medicaid, foster parents and a variety of other worthy causes. With money being so tight, I wonder how the state can justify trying capital cases when they can be up to 70 percent more expensive than non-capital cases, including the costs of incarceration (Kansas Performance Audit Report, December 2003).

It is cheaper to incarcerate a person for the rest of his natural life than to kill him. It's especially shocking when the state uses our tax money to execute a person when the victim's family does not support the execution. That is the case of Donald Jones, scheduled to be executed Wednesday for the murder of his grandmother, Dorothy Knuckles, in 1993. The Knuckles family has been very outspoken about how their family has already lost one member and does not want to lose another. They do not support the death penalty.

Why is the state executing Jones? I think this case raises questions about how our tax money is being spent. If not for moral and ethical reasons, then for economic reasons we need to stop the use of the death penalty in our state. Please call Gov. Matt Blunt and let him know you don't want your tax money to be used to kill.

ELLIE CRAFT, St. Louis