More Time Than Anyone Should Spend

Yesterday's Columbia (Missouri) Tribune has this story, titled "Victim's widow testifies for bill on moratorium":

Ginger Masters said she had just an hour of sleep the night before testifying yesterday in front of the House Crime Prevention & Public Safety Committee.

Her late husband, former Macon County Prosecuting Attorney David Masters, was found dead in 2005 with a cocaine dosage that was some 40 times a lethal dose. Prosecutors have sought the death penalty for at least two people accused in the murder in southwest Missouri.

Masters of Columbia said her decision whether to support or oppose the death penalty was not easily made. But she said her husband was a Buddhist who didn’t believe the death penalty was a fair application of justice. She favors enacting a two-year moratorium to study capital punishment in Missouri.

"After having spent more time, according to my children, than anyone should spend in studying the death penalty and the way that’s adjudicated across the country and in the state of Missouri, it seems to me that it’s not fair," Masters said. "In cases, you have jurors being struck for the color of their skin. You have jurors being struck because they don’t favor the death penalty."

Read the rest of the story here.