Murderer deserves death penalty

Joseph Edward Duncan will probably live longer than I.

He'll certainly cost the taxpayers a whole lot more than yours truly.

I'm 55. Duncan, if memory serves, was in his mid-30s when he spotted Shasta Groene playing outside in the summer of 2005. He stalked the nine-year-old girl and her family for a couple of days before beating three adults to death with a claw hammer and hauling Shasta and her brother off to a remote campsite in the woods near St. Regis, where the two kids were tortured for weeks before the little boy was murdered.

'Tortured' is a mild family-newspaper term for what Duncan did to those two kids. From what I hear at the newspaper office, the agonies inflicted on Shasta and Dylan exceeded the most depraved Hollywood horror films.

I also hear that when Duncan was caught he had pictures and GPS data indicating he was stalking a Polson-area family as well. No one will discuss that case on the record, but I personally believe only random chance kept Duncan out of our own back yards.

And yet this monster will probably outlive me, thanks to our legal system. Duncan was correctly and wisely sentenced to life without parole in an Idaho court. Now the feds are taking their shot at him, since Dylan was executed on federal land in Montana. The feds are seeking the death penalty.

As well they should. If there was ever a poster child for the needle, it's Joseph Edward Duncan. There is no question of his guilt. He has no chance for rehabilitation. There's no reason for taxpayers to foot the bill to keep him alive.

But we'll pay, and pay, and pay. Duncan will be sentenced to death and the appeals will begin. Some public defender will make a $150 per hour career of legal nit-picking to keep the child-raping multi-murderer alive.

The process has already started. Duncan had asked to be allowed to represent himself. No matter what the judge decides on that issue, Duncan will appeal. We'll hire him a lawyer. And for the next 30 years he'll sit in his cell savoring his twisted memories of what he did to those two little kids while the appeals and the legal bills roll along.

The short-term solution's easy. Turn Duncan loose in the general prison population. Justice would be served in very short order, likely at the hands of a lifer who has a nine-year-old daughter.

Long term, I'll hopefully be looking down from a better place when the gates of hell swing open for Joseph Edward Duncan.