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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

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