STORM2K

By Bob Ray Sanders, Star-Telegram Staff Writer

Beverly J. Cropp admitted in a Tarrant County courtroom last week that she actively participated in the 1996 abduction and murder of a 27-year-old Richland Hills woman.

From the witness stand in Judge Wayne Salvant's court, Cropp told jurors how she helped kidnap Gina Dykman -- pulling her from one car, placing her in the trunk of another, binding her with duct tape -- and later stood by in a Johnson County cemetery as the woman was shot to death.

For her part in this lurid cold-blooded crime, Cropp will walk.

Plea agreements are widely used by prosecutors in cases when the evidence against the defendant is weak; they are also used for some minor crimes commited by persons with little or no criminal history. The prosecutor gets a conviction; the defendant gets some kind of punshment although certainly not of the magnitude he or she would have faced after a conviction without the benefit of a plea agreement. So everyone is happy. But there is a problem here. Persons convicted of wanton crimes of violence, or sex crimes, should be locked up and the key thrown away. What happened in Texas was pure crap and frankly im shocked this happened in a state known for law and order.

Looks like they made a trade off to get the person who actually pulled the trigger. That doesn't make it right but that's the way things go. Sometimes it's the only way to get the primary offender....