Title: To execute or not: A question of cost?
Headings: To execute or not: A question of cost?
To execute or not: A question of cost?
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Content: The reasons I changed my mind were between that and how the victims' families just get raped during appeals." But if convicted killers get life imprisonment instead of death, is that letting them off easy? Not a chance, says 52-year-old Gordon "Randy" Steidl. He lived on death row and then in the general prison population, after his sentence was commuted to life. He preferred his former accommodations. Steidl was released in 2004 after being exonerated of the 1986 stabbing deaths of a newlywed couple in Paris, Ill. He had an alibi for the night of the murders, corroborated by others. But he was convicted on eyewitness testimony provided by the town drunk and the town drug addict. Both later recanted. The state of Illinois spent $3.5 million trying to execute him, "only to end up giving me a life sentence," Steidl said. " And then 5 1/2 years after that, I was exonerated."