While the Argus shows the debate between the candidates on the Death Penalty, KELO has an interesting article on Ol' Sparky

Today in the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, the candidates for Governor debate the merits of the Death Penalty from Mitchell as Governor Rounds contemplates the application of it for the first time in decades:

Rounds said he has laid out the process he will use to review the case of Elijah Page, 24, convicted and sentenced to death in the 2001 slaying of 19-year-old Chester Poage near Spearfish. A judge earlier this week granted Page's request to stop appeals, paving the way for execution perhaps later this month. As governor, Rounds has broad powers to issue pardons or to commute sentences.

and...

Democrat candidate Jack Billion of Sioux Falls said Tuesday the Page case and every other death-penalty case must to be judged on its own merits.

and...

"I'm not convinced it's an absolute necessity in South Dakota," he said. "I'm a little bit ambivalent about the death penalty right now, as a deterrent, as an economically feasible punishment."

and..

Willis said the death penalty isn't employed to exact vengeance.

"We're doing it for righteousness sake," he said.

"Why should we let him live when he killed somebody?'' Willis asked. "If somebody takes a life, what gives them a right to live?"

Gerber said he doesn't think the state should use the death penalty.

Read it all here as you make up your own mind on the application of the ultimate pubishment. Is it wisely applied justice, or is it an eye for an eye? Can that question can ever be answered as the debate becomes real in South Dakota for the first time in decades?

While on the whole topic over at KELOLAND.com, they have an interesting article on when the law was changed from using as Ol' Sparky as an instrument of execution to Ol' Sleepy.

In two weeks, Elijah Page will be the first person executed in South Dakota in nearly 60 years. Page will be given the lethal injection, which the legislature passed as the state's method of execution in 1984.

The South Dakota State penitentiary used its electric chair just once, in 1947.

In 1984, the legislature discussed getting rid of the chair for lethal injection, a combination of drugs that ends the life of a convict.

“Many people thought it was a more humane method of capitol punishment, as opposed to the horrific nature of electrocution,” says Scott Heidepriem, who was in the State House of Representatives at the time.

That's one reason Heidepriem argued in favor of the change. But the humane nature of lethal injection is also the same reason some legislators didn't want to use it.

“Is this method too convenient, too easy to administer?” Heidepriem says. “Or should capital punishment actually be horrific for those who witness it and those who experience it?”

Read it all here.