Families Oppose Abolishing Death Penalty

February 25, 2009

by Cliff Judy (WICHITA, Kan.)

As a Kansas Senate committee plans to talk about abolishing the death penalty on Thursday, families of capital murder victims say it's the system that needs to change...not the punishment.

Eyewitness News talked to three families of recent capital murder victims.

Brian and Cindy Sanderholm's daughter Jodi was killed in January 2007, and her killer, Justin Thurber, received the death penalty. Chelsea Brooks died in June 2006, but all of the three men charged with her capital murder received life in prison. Rachel Dennis disappeared in March 2007, and her family and prosecutors decided not to seek the death penalty. Last year, Christopher Lowrance was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life.

All three of the families tell Eyewintess News they're not buying the idea abolishing the death penalty would save the state money. Senator Carolyn McGinn sponsored the bill saying non-death penalty cases cost an average of $460,000 less than each capital murder trial.

"He's incarcerated," says Brian Sanderholm. "He can't do it to anybody else, but I personally would like to see him put to death. I don't believe he deserves to breathe the same air that we do."

Cindy Sanderholm also says she believes the death penalty can act as a deterrent if the state begins executing the men on death row. She hopes keeping the death penalty on the table and enforcing it will make a suspect think twice before taking someone's life.

"We do not want another couple, another family to ever have to go through this," says Cindy Sanderholm. "It's horrible. It is horrible."

Terri Brooks agrees, even though her daughter's killers didn't receive the death penalty.

"It's not the death penalty that is the cost inefficient," says Brooks. "It's the appeal process."

Lorri Dennis, Rachel Dennis' stepmother, says she's e-mailed and called her local lawmakers opposing the bill.

The bill would not take away death penalty sentences from the ten men already on death row in Kansas. Justin Thurber has not officially been sentenced to death. If the judge overseeing his case upholds a jury's recommendation next month, he will become the state's eleventh death row member.

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