Death Penalty A study by the liberal think tank New Jersey Policy Perspective on the cost of the death penalty has concluded that each capital case costs the state about $11 million. The study also estimates the cost of sentencing a murderer to death in other states. It has been cited in public hearings held by the New Jersey Policy Commission, which is reviewing that state's process for handing capital cases according to a story by Robert Schwaneberg in the New Jersey Star Ledger.

Sentencing A federal judge has sentenced three animal rights activists to four to six years in prison for threatening researchers and vandalizing a New Jersey laboratory of Huntington Life Science. The case is the first application of the Animal Enterprise Protection Act, adopted by Congress in 1992, according to a story by Laura Mansnerus in the New York Times.

Sex Offenders. The Virginia State Crime Commission is pondering voluntary castration as an alternative "treatment" for sex offenders, reports Frank Green in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Among the problems with this proposal are a lack of evidence it works and the question of how "voluntary" this procedure can be when the alternative is indefinite incarceration.