I am ambivalent about the death penalty because it is necessary in cases like this, but too often abused to kill innocent men and women. Also it eliminates any possibility of redemption for the convicted like the young woman executed in Texas in the last century who had completely turned her life around in prison and would have been a model citizen if released into the community. On the other end of the spectrum, there are people who will never accept responsibility for their deeds and continue to be a danger to the community, but they are never arrested, tried, convicted and executed even in states that tout their record of executions. In most of the American justice system "equal justice under the law" is applied dollar-for-dollar and not person-by-person. In that sense you get only what you pay for.