Paying Price

Some of these heinous crimes, debt, ensuring that they are based against the death penalty.

2008 abduction, rape and murder of North Port mother Denise Lee is a crime.

Friday, Sarasota, the judge sentenced the murderer Lee, Michael King, the ultimate punishment. The decision follows the unanimous recommendation of a jury that King was found guilty of first degree murder and other heinous crimes.

By most measures, the verdict is fair. However, no pleasure, I found it must be weighed against the harsh realities that can be taken.

The first and most tragic, that the King's execution will not return the dead, nor the restoration of normal life, her husband and two young children before.

Secondly, the death penalty automatically triggers, procedures delayed the execution of many years, the family painfully funny-Go-Round complaints.

Thirdly, that, with tens of other cases, the output of capital resources of the criminal justice system in Florida.

Because of constitutional requirements in cases of death penalty have increased substantially more expensive than the murder trial, in which he requested a life without possibility of parole.

In Florida, the difference between death and life-without-word, which amounts to tens of millions of dollars a year, studies have shown.

It is wrong to put a price on justice. But forced, at the time, a serious recession, and budget cuts to police and courts, which can feel good about spending so much punishment for crime prevention?

Studies show that the death penalty is not an effective deterrent against violent crime, an option, especially compared with the cheapest life without parole.

Millions spent on the death penalty may be paid occupations are important measures for preventing crime. They can fund additional police officers, probation officers and corrections officers, investigators and prosecutors.

They can finance other crimes Labs substantial backlog of DNA samples and evidence of the process.

They can fund addiction services and tools to work with serious mental illness.

The dollar was even money could have been better to 9-1-1 emergency communications - a critical life-saving link disaster incorrect if I save a lost opportunity for them.

Budget Committee in the trial and sentencing Michael King to serve as proof that even with the cuts and the deficit, the judicial system worked. The prosecution discovered, analyzed and important information, the murderer has been captured, and the jury of his peers convicted him.

The jurors, judges, and probably the vast majority of South West Florida agree that King deserves the death penalty.

Sentences. This is the cost - not punishment - is the line.