Death Penalty Debated in Kentucky Tragedy

As the result of a crime so horrible that it has triggered the emotions of people throughout the nation, 27-year-old Robert Drown, Jr. of Kenova, W. Va., has recently been accused of murdering a Carter County, Kentucky woman and her two daughters and setting fire to their trailer to cover his offenses. What makes the story even more heartbreaking is that the registered sex offender allegedly raped the older, ten-year-old daughter prior to beating her to death and left her three-year-old sister to burn alive as he torched the residence.

Captured in West Virginia, Drown - who is also charged in a 1998 rape -- originally fought extradition to Kentucky because, many believe, the Bluegrass State has something West Virginia doesn't: the death penalty. However, perhaps realizing that it wouldn't be allowed, he abandoned the waiver and has been returned to Kentucky to stand trial. Carter County's Commonwealth attorney David Flatt has stated that he will seek the death penalty for the suspect if he is found guilty.

As Drown's trial nears, camps on both sides of the death penalty issue are becoming vocal throughout the state. Advocates claim that the hideousness of the crimes should require a sentence of death by lethal injection if found guilty in a court of law. Others maintain that life without parole would be a better sentence; that euthanizing criminals is immoral and non-Biblical. However, most residents of Carter and neighboring Boyd Counties admit he should suffer the supreme penalty.

The answer to the question of euthanasia versus life imprisonment is as complex as the issue itself. According to different states, a death penalty case, from the point of arrest to execution, can cost from one to three million dollars, depending on the number of appeals submitted by the convict's attorneys. Normally, a death penalty conviction normally goes through several levels of appeal, each of which have to be heard by the courts. Of course, in each case, attorneys have to be paid - and their cost is significantly higher than that of corrections officers. Each officer is normally responsible for several prisoners at once, while one death-row inmate sees several attorneys, has numerous documents filed with the state and makes frequent appellate court appearances over many years. As many as eighty-two percent of death row inmates eventually have their sentences commuted to life without parole, which means that death-penalty costs are added to those of the converted sentence. Protesters of the death penalty argue that those costs could be more sensibly used to strengthen our roads, schools and infrastructure.

Cases resulting in life without parole, however, average about five hundred thousand dollars per case. Many of these convicts never make it through the first twenty years in confinement; in Drown's case, he may not make it through the first few years of imprisonment because a person convicted of murdering children is hated -- and sometimes brutally beaten or killed -- by other inmates.

The complexity of this issue comes from the unbelievable cruelty of the crime in question. A young woman, whom Drown had briefly dated, was strangled. Her daughter was brutally raped, then beaten to death, beside her mother's dead body. The woman's youngest daughter was left to cry, scream, choke and burn to death in full view of her family's bodies, while their trailer burned to the ground. If the case were "open-and-shut" and irrefutable evidence proved that Drown, in fact, was the perpetrator of these crimes, then a swiftly-executed death sentence could be considered fitting. It also could serve as a tremendously effective warning against anyone who would consider this type of crime.

Whatever the outcome of the trial and sentencing, there's no doubt that the outrage of a heartbroken community will have its effect on all its participants. The horror of the crime itself - and the fact that another such tragedy could occur - will certainly make us all more aware of those we are beginning to know, and more vigilant by watching out for friends and neighbors around us.

Meanwhile, the trial - as with the death penalty argument - is still pending.