damasa-YOU STARTED IT!

[Lil_G]

Originally posted by skip101



If they would actually use the death penalty it would deter. Once a criminal is put to death they wont be committing any more crimes. Most crimes are committed by repeat offenders.

...hmmmm okay, then why doesn't society enforce measures to prevent the overwhelming amount of corporate crime that exists today.

It's funny, reading these comments I would assume that violent crime accounts for much greater than 1% of all crimes committed.
Let me give you a scenario now of a presenter for a course I studied two years ago. He was a man in his early 40s who was just released from jail after serving a term for 2nd degree murder. He was kind of a street kid in his younger days, dropped the fists whenever he cared. One night he picked a fight with a guy, and after knocking his opponent to the ground the guy hit his head on the sidewalk and later died....telling the class this story, he couldn't stress enough the pain he felt every day for being responsible for this individual's death. If he could go back to when he was 18 and just walk away from the fight he'd do so in a heartbeat. He lost half his life behind bars, but wanted to turn his life around and make the most of his remaining years. He worked hard everyday to abide to the rules and strived to build his work skills so that one day he could become a productive member of society. In co-operation with rehabilitating facilities and the correctional services, he became fully employed and cherished his prison free days as a new man. The moral of this story, if you were to punish this man so that his chance of reform was no longer available it would be contradictory to some of the basic premises for which our society functions on.

[mmcat]

i was a police and court reporter for a lot of years and saw a bunch of scum get the proverbial slap on the hand and do it again. flash ahead to now, over thanksgiving a 5 year old girl was taken from walmart, three miles away from my school. her body showed up the next day in a parking lot about 15 miles away -- quite dead and intentionally disfigured. i had several of the relatives in class. authorities were able to lift a palm print from the plastic bag put over the child's head. a repeat sex offender is in custody. how can you not advocate the death penalty in a case like this?
mmcat

[justamom]

Ditto mmcat!

Police Officer killed trying to break up domestic arguement

Fraternity brother of Hubby is driving drunk and kills highway workman.

Young girl walking killed by hit and run

Young girl raped and strangled after leaving club with stranger

2 people "executed" in convenience store-uncertain motive

Infant child dies due to parental abuse

All of these are actual situatons that I have real knowledge of.
Where do you draw the line? Is it intent or the degree of repulsiveness? In all cases, dead is dead. (all I need is INTENT to do bodily harm)
The first exposure I had was the Clutter murders in Holcomb Kansas. Capote wrote "In Cold Blood" and they eventually made a movie. Yes, these guys hung & swung.
My personal opinion is, there are times when the death penalty is necessary. What good has it done anyone keeping Charles Manson alive. He WAS scheduled to die, but California changed their laws.
If a brutal murder ever occurred to one of mine, I must say I would go to ANY and EVERY extreme measure I could imagine & hunt down and destroy the animal. The sad thing is, when friends or family do that, THEY become the criminal.
***One more thought-In the '70's I learned about the videos they made/make(?) in foreign countries-Mexico was the example-where they took kidnapped children/teens/adults and had sex with them and/or murdered them. Now what should we do with people like THAT??? Yes, prison life can be brutal, but "no possibility of parole" has too many loop holes and these people don't deserve to live!

[dzrose93]

I'm all for the death penalty. I think if someone intentionally kills someone else in cold blood, then they should lose their right to live also. Give them the Old Testament "eye for an eye" justice and do it quickly. To me, the appeals process for convicted killers has gotten way out of hand. We've got people on death row who have been there for, literally, decades because they've got some crafty lawyer looking up obscure appeal loopholes 24/7. Everyone knows they're guilty, some of them have even admitted they're guilty, and yet the appeals go on and on. Taxpayers' money is being burned annually keeping these people alive and, personally, I think there are better ways to spend our money.

One thing that I've never quite understood is why some killers get the death penalty and other killers get lesser sentences. I know that, under the law, it depends on how heinous the crime is, among other things. But, to me, murder is murder and I think that a person who beats his wife to death should get the death penalty just as quickly as a cop killer.

[justamom]

...and it's another DITTO!

[James]

So you believe that some of these people we are keeping alive merit death? But there are many people that die that merit life, so maybe we shouldn't be so quick to kill these others . . . Sorry just watched Tolkien and that seemed Apropos of the moment.

I am not sure its possible to argue death penalty to a final outcome. Because that would pressupose some type of objective reality that we could perceive and go "look, there is the absolute truth in this matter".

With that disclaimer in place, I have some statements.

I am uncomfortable with a government that has a mechanism in place to kill its own citizens. Especialy when it is differentially applied, and often left for an economic and/or an unequal adversarial system to decide the outcome.

I believe that the if the jurors are comfortable enough with their decision to execute they should have to take part in the process. For example all 12 jurors will have to press a button, but only one button gives the signal to administrate lethal injection or elctric chair.

PRison, especially death row is not a comfortable affair, although it will differ from place to place. In fact I have read some things about some prisons that makes me wonder why amnesty international doesn't look into it. But I think they are only worried about people that suffer for politcal reasons. But certainly some of the prisons don't qualify for humane.

By the way, I am pretty sure I would want to kill someone for hurting someone I know . . or even cutting me off . . . But that is not necessarily a legitimate reason to nationalize a death sentence.

For the Death penalty to truly work, you have to execute for much lower levels of crimes. If you are killed for stealing 5 dollars you won't even get to the point of stealing more. If any situation that wasn't self-defense was punishable by death, and I mean immediate, like dragging them out of the courtroom and putting a bullet through their heads, it would be a more effective deterrant against murder.

[skip101]

Originally posted by Lil_G


...hmmmm okay, then why doesn't society enforce measures to prevent the overwhelming amount of corporate crime that exists today.

...because I am not in charge, yet. Once I am in charge I will fry them all if it makes you happy.. Murderers, rapists and violent criminals who repeatedly commit crimes over and over will be history.

[valkyrie]

This is certainly an issue on which we will all never agree. My question is this -- do you think that it is okay to execute innocent people? The fact is, poor people often get stuck with bad attorneys, because they think that anything is better than a public defender (which is not the case) and end up hiring any fool who will take their case for the least amount of money. These attorneys in many cases do a terrible job. Please don't think that people appealing death sentences are all a bunch of hardened criminals who are trying to use crafty legal techniques to avoid the death penalty. That is not the case most of the time. When it comes right down to it, YOU could be picked up off the street, taken into a police station, tortured, beaten, suffocated and then you confess so that the abuse will stop, and then you could end up being sentenced to death for something you didn't do. It happens all the time.

Also, police lie and abuse the system -- not in all cases, of course, but police do lie. I had a police officer lie, under oath, when I was in court on a traffic ticket -- he lied, but I had photographs to prove my case, and ended up winning.

Here's some food for thought --

From http://www.amnesty-usa.org/abolish/factsinnocence.html

Because the death penalty system is administered by human beings, and because human beings are fallible, innocent people may have been executed in the past and will continue to be executed in the future.

Michael Radelet, Hugo Adam Bedau, and Constance E. Putnam report that 350 people have been wrongfully convicted of capital or potentially capital crimes in America since 1900. Of these, 23 were executed. (In Spite of Innocence, Northeastern University Press, Boston, 1992.)

Between 1973 and 2001, 98 people in 22 States have been released from death rows across the USA after evidence of their wrongful convictions emerged.

In January 2001, the case against Peter Limone has been officially dropped by the state of Massachusetts, 33 years after being convicted and sentenced. Joseph Barboza, the main witness against the four men admitted that he had fabricated much of his testimony.

In October 2000, Earl Washington received a full pardon following DNA testing that exonerated him of a rape and murder charge for which he had spent 17 years in prison in Virginia. Washington, who suffers from mental retardation, came within one week of execution in 1985. In 1993, his death sentence was commuted to life. He remains in prison on unrelated charges.

In March 2000, Joseph Nahume Green became the 87th person exonerated since 1973. He was acquitted of the murder for which he spent seven years on Florida's death row.

In January 2000, Steve Manning became the 13th defendant exonerated in Illinois when prosecutors announced that they were dropping all charges against him and no longer planned to retry him for the murder for which he had been convicted.

The exoneration of the 13 Illinois death row inmates led Governor George Ryan to declare a moratorium on executions in the State of Illinois.

"I don't think an execution will ever happen again while I'm governor. I'd rather err on that side."
-George H. Ryan, Governor of Illinois

In September 1999, Charles Munsey died in a North Carolina prison. He had been imprisoned for six years and sentenced to death for a crime to which another man confessed. Shortly before his death, Munsey had won a new trial.

Factors leading to wrongful convictions include:

Inadequate defense
Police and Prosecutorial misconduct
Perjured testimony and mistaken eyewitness testimony
Racial Prejudice
Tainted jailhouse testimony
Suppression of mitigating evidence and misinterpretation of evidence
Community pressure
_____

From the Chicago Tribune articles --

Illinois has claimed the dubious distinction of having exonerated as many Death Row inmates as it has executed. But many of the circumstances that sent 12 innocent men to Death Row have been documented by the Tribune in numerous other capital cases.

In the first comprehensive examination of all 285 death-penalty cases since capital punishment was restored in Illinois 22 years ago, the Tribune has identified numerous fault lines running through the criminal justice system, subverting the notion that when the stakes are the highest, trials should be fail-safe.

The findings reveal a system so plagued by unprofessionalism, imprecision and bias that they have rendered the state's ultimate form of punishment its least credible.

The Tribune investigation, which included an exhaustive analysis of appellate opinions and briefs, trial transcripts and lawyer disciplinary records, as well as scores of interviews with witnesses, attorneys and defendants, has found that:

- At least 33 times, a defendant sentenced to die was represented at trial by an attorney who has been disbarred or suspended--sanctions reserved for conduct so incompetent, unethical or even criminal the lawyer's license is taken away.

In Kane County, an attorney was suspended for incompetence and dishonesty. Ten days after getting his law license back in 1997, he was appointed by the county's chief judge to defend a man's life.

- In at least 46 cases where a defendant was sentenced to die, the prosecution's evidence included a jailhouse informant--a form of evidence so historically unreliable that some states have begun warning jurors to treat it with special skepticism.

In one Cook County case, the word of a convicted con man, called a "pathological liar" by federal authorities, put a man on Death Row. In exchange for a sharply reduced sentence, the con artist testified that while in jail together the defendant confessed to him, even though a tape recording of their conversation contains no confession.

- In at least 20 cases where a defendant was sentenced to die, the prosecution's case included a crime lab employee's visual comparison of hairs--a type of forensic evidence that dates to the 19th Century and has proved so notoriously unreliable that its use is now restricted or even barred in some jurisdictions outside Illinois.

- At least 35 times, a defendant sent to Death Row was black and the jury that determined guilt or sentence all white--a racial composition that prosecutors consider such an advantage that they have removed as many as 20 African-Americans from a single trial's jury pool to achieve it. The U.S. Constitution forbids racial discrimination during jury selection, but courts have enforced that prohibition haltingly.

- Forty percent of Illinois' death-penalty cases are characterized by at least one of the above elements. Sometimes, all of the elements appear in a single case. Dennis Williams, who is black, was sentenced to die by an all-white Cook County jury; prosecuted with evidence that included a jailhouse informant and hair comparison; and defended, none too well, by an attorney who was later disbarred.

Williams and three other men--referred to as the Ford Heights Four--were wrongly convicted of the 1978 murders of a south suburban couple. Williams served 18 years, almost all on Death Row, before he was cleared by DNA evidence in 1996. He then filed a lawsuit accusing sheriff's officers of framing him.

"The feeling is emotionally choking," Williams said of being sentenced to die for a crime he did not commit. "It's inhuman. It's something that shouldn't be imaginable. Here are people who are supposed to uphold the law who are breaking it."

Illinois houses its condemned inmates at the Menard and Pontiac correctional centers and at the new prison in Downstate Tamms. They spend 23 hours a day in cells so narrow they can touch opposite walls at the same time.
_____

To win a death sentence, prosecutors in Illinois have repeatedly exaggerated the criminal backgrounds of defendants--turning misdemeanors into felonies, manslaughter into murder, innocence into guilt.

Prosecutors have lied to jurors, raising the possibility of parole when no such possibility existed.

They also have browbeaten jurors, saying they must return the death sentence, or they will have violated their oaths and lied to God.
_____

For police and prosecutors, few pieces of evidence close a case better than a confession. After all, juries place a remarkable degree of faith in confessions; few people can imagine suspects would admit guilt if they were innocent. But, in Illinois, confessions have proved faulty.

Howard's case, his lawyers say, may be one example. As in many of the other Burge cases that resulted in a death sentence, without a confession there is little evidence against Howard--certainly no physical evidence, such as fingerprints, and no weapon. And in the years since Howard's trial, new information that could help reverse his conviction has emerged.

Criminal suspects frequently realize the damage they have done to themselves by confessing, then falsely claim that the police abused them. But what separate many of the Burge cases from others, and what make the accusations so troublesome, are their rich detail and numbing repetitiveness.

A federal judge and the Illinois Appellate Court have made rulings that, in often harsh language, suggest the alleged abuse under Burge warrants additional investigation and threatens to taint trial verdicts.

"It is now common knowledge," U.S. District Judge Milton Shadur wrote in one Death Row inmate's appeal in March, "that in the early- to mid-1980s, Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge and many of the officers working under him regularly engaged in the physical abuse and torture of prisoners to extract confessions."

Citing internal police accounts, lawsuits and appeals, Shadur said that torture occurred as an "established practice, not just on an isolated basis."

Burge was fired from the department in 1993 for torture in one case. Reached at his Florida home, he declined to comment.

Police tactics scrutinized

Charges of police misconduct--from manufacturing evidence to concealing information that could help clear suspects--are central to at least half of the 12 Illinois cases where a man sentenced to death was exonerated.

In two of those cases, neither of which is linked to Burge or his detectives, men whose confessions put them on Death Row were cleared and set free.

Ronald Jones had long claimed he confessed to the 1985 murder and rape of a South Side woman only because Chicago police beat him repeatedly. After nearly eight years on Death Row, he was exonerated by DNA evidence earlier this year.

Gary Gauger claimed his unsigned confession to the 1993 murders of his parents in rural McHenry County was the product of coercion by sheriff's detectives who questioned Gauger for some 21 hours until he broke down and agreed to a scenario the detectives suggested.

[skip101]

Originally posted by valkyrie
This is certainly an issue on which we will all never agree. My question is this -- do you think that it is okay to execute innocent people? The fact is, poor people often get stuck with bad attorneys, because they think that anything is better than a public defender (which is not the case) and end up hiring any fool who will take their case for the least amount of money. These attorneys in many cases do a terrible job. Please don't think that people appealing death sentences are all a bunch of hardened criminals who are trying to use crafty legal techniques to avoid the death penalty. That is not the case most of the time. When it comes right down to it, YOU could be picked up off the street, taken into a police station, tortured, beaten, suffocated and then you confess so that the abuse will stop, and then you could end up being sentenced to death for something you didn't do. It happens all the time.

Also, police lie and abuse the system -- not in all cases, of course, but police do lie. I had a police officer lie, under oath, when I was in court on a traffic ticket -- he lied, but I had photographs to prove my case, and ended up winning.

Here's some food for thought --

From http://www.amnesty-usa.org/abolish/factsinnocence.html

Because the death penalty system is administered by human beings, and because human beings are fallible, innocent people may have been executed in the past and will continue to be executed in the future.

Michael Radelet, Hugo Adam Bedau, and Constance E. Putnam report that 350 people have been wrongfully convicted of capital or potentially capital crimes in America since 1900. Of these, 23 were executed. (In Spite of Innocence, Northeastern University Press, Boston, 1992.)

Between 1973 and 2001, 98 people in 22 States have been released from death rows across the USA after evidence of their wrongful convictions emerged.

In January 2001, the case against Peter Limone has been officially dropped by the state of Massachusetts, 33 years after being convicted and sentenced. Joseph Barboza, the main witness against the four men admitted that he had fabricated much of his testimony.

In October 2000, Earl Washington received a full pardon following DNA testing that exonerated him of a rape and murder charge for which he had spent 17 years in prison in Virginia. Washington, who suffers from mental retardation, came within one week of execution in 1985. In 1993, his death sentence was commuted to life. He remains in prison on unrelated charges.

In March 2000, Joseph Nahume Green became the 87th person exonerated since 1973. He was acquitted of the murder for which he spent seven years on Florida's death row.

In January 2000, Steve Manning became the 13th defendant exonerated in Illinois when prosecutors announced that they were dropping all charges against him and no longer planned to retry him for the murder for which he had been convicted.

The exoneration of the 13 Illinois death row inmates led Governor George Ryan to declare a moratorium on executions in the State of Illinois.

"I don't think an execution will ever happen again while I'm governor. I'd rather err on that side."
-George H. Ryan, Governor of Illinois

In September 1999, Charles Munsey died in a North Carolina prison. He had been imprisoned for six years and sentenced to death for a crime to which another man confessed. Shortly before his death, Munsey had won a new trial.

Factors leading to wrongful convictions include:

Inadequate defense
Police and Prosecutorial misconduct
Perjured testimony and mistaken eyewitness testimony
Racial Prejudice
Tainted jailhouse testimony
Suppression of mitigating evidence and misinterpretation of evidence
Community pressure
_____

From the Chicago Tribune articles --

Illinois has claimed the dubious distinction of having exonerated as many Death Row inmates as it has executed. But many of the circumstances that sent 12 innocent men to Death Row have been documented by the Tribune in numerous other capital cases.

In the first comprehensive examination of all 285 death-penalty cases since capital punishment was restored in Illinois 22 years ago, the Tribune has identified numerous fault lines running through the criminal justice system, subverting the notion that when the stakes are the highest, trials should be fail-safe.

The findings reveal a system so plagued by unprofessionalism, imprecision and bias that they have rendered the state's ultimate form of punishment its least credible.

The Tribune investigation, which included an exhaustive analysis of appellate opinions and briefs, trial transcripts and lawyer disciplinary records, as well as scores of interviews with witnesses, attorneys and defendants, has found that:

- At least 33 times, a defendant sentenced to die was represented at trial by an attorney who has been disbarred or suspended--sanctions reserved for conduct so incompetent, unethical or even criminal the lawyer's license is taken away.

In Kane County, an attorney was suspended for incompetence and dishonesty. Ten days after getting his law license back in 1997, he was appointed by the county's chief judge to defend a man's life.

- In at least 46 cases where a defendant was sentenced to die, the prosecution's evidence included a jailhouse informant--a form of evidence so historically unreliable that some states have begun warning jurors to treat it with special skepticism.

In one Cook County case, the word of a convicted con man, called a "pathological liar" by federal authorities, put a man on Death Row. In exchange for a sharply reduced sentence, the con artist testified that while in jail together the defendant confessed to him, even though a tape recording of their conversation contains no confession.

- In at least 20 cases where a defendant was sentenced to die, the prosecution's case included a crime lab employee's visual comparison of hairs--a type of forensic evidence that dates to the 19th Century and has proved so notoriously unreliable that its use is now restricted or even barred in some jurisdictions outside Illinois.

- At least 35 times, a defendant sent to Death Row was black and the jury that determined guilt or sentence all white--a racial composition that prosecutors consider such an advantage that they have removed as many as 20 African-Americans from a single trial's jury pool to achieve it. The U.S. Constitution forbids racial discrimination during jury selection, but courts have enforced that prohibition haltingly.

- Forty percent of Illinois' death-penalty cases are characterized by at least one of the above elements. Sometimes, all of the elements appear in a single case. Dennis Williams, who is black, was sentenced to die by an all-white Cook County jury; prosecuted with evidence that included a jailhouse informant and hair comparison; and defended, none too well, by an attorney who was later disbarred.

Williams and three other men--referred to as the Ford Heights Four--were wrongly convicted of the 1978 murders of a south suburban couple. Williams served 18 years, almost all on Death Row, before he was cleared by DNA evidence in 1996. He then filed a lawsuit accusing sheriff's officers of framing him.

"The feeling is emotionally choking," Williams said of being sentenced to die for a crime he did not commit. "It's inhuman. It's something that shouldn't be imaginable. Here are people who are supposed to uphold the law who are breaking it."

Illinois houses its condemned inmates at the Menard and Pontiac correctional centers and at the new prison in Downstate Tamms. They spend 23 hours a day in cells so narrow they can touch opposite walls at the same time.
_____

To win a death sentence, prosecutors in Illinois have repeatedly exaggerated the criminal backgrounds of defendants--turning misdemeanors into felonies, manslaughter into murder, innocence into guilt.

Prosecutors have lied to jurors, raising the possibility of parole when no such possibility existed.

They also have browbeaten jurors, saying they must return the death sentence, or they will have violated their oaths and lied to God.
_____

For police and prosecutors, few pieces of evidence close a case better than a confession. After all, juries place a remarkable degree of faith in confessions; few people can imagine suspects would admit guilt if they were innocent. But, in Illinois, confessions have proved faulty.

Howard's case, his lawyers say, may be one example. As in many of the other Burge cases that resulted in a death sentence, without a confession there is little evidence against Howard--certainly no physical evidence, such as fingerprints, and no weapon. And in the years since Howard's trial, new information that could help reverse his conviction has emerged.

Criminal suspects frequently realize the damage they have done to themselves by confessing, then falsely claim that the police abused them. But what separate many of the Burge cases from others, and what make the accusations so troublesome, are their rich detail and numbing repetitiveness.

A federal judge and the Illinois Appellate Court have made rulings that, in often harsh language, suggest the alleged abuse under Burge warrants additional investigation and threatens to taint trial verdicts.

"It is now common knowledge," U.S. District Judge Milton Shadur wrote in one Death Row inmate's appeal in March, "that in the early- to mid-1980s, Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge and many of the officers working under him regularly engaged in the physical abuse and torture of prisoners to extract confessions."

Citing internal police accounts, lawsuits and appeals, Shadur said that torture occurred as an "established practice, not just on an isolated basis."

Burge was fired from the department in 1993 for torture in one case. Reached at his Florida home, he declined to comment.

Police tactics scrutinized

Charges of police misconduct--from manufacturing evidence to concealing information that could help clear suspects--are central to at least half of the 12 Illinois cases where a man sentenced to death was exonerated.

In two of those cases, neither of which is linked to Burge or his detectives, men whose confessions put them on Death Row were cleared and set free.

Ronald Jones had long claimed he confessed to the 1985 murder and rape of a South Side woman only because Chicago police beat him repeatedly. After nearly eight years on Death Row, he was exonerated by DNA evidence earlier this year.

Gary Gauger claimed his unsigned confession to the 1993 murders of his parents in rural McHenry County was the product of coercion by sheriff's detectives who questioned Gauger for some 21 hours until he broke down and agreed to a scenario the detectives suggested.

Are you against the death penaty or just against innocent people being but do death?

[dzrose93]

Originally posted by James
So you believe that some of these people we are keeping alive merit death? But there are many people that die that merit life, so maybe we shouldn't be so quick to kill these others .

Yes, the people that are sitting on death row for years and years merit death. We shouldn't be paying for their food, shelter, college degrees, entertainment, etc. for 25 years waiting for someone to flip a switch. It's absolutely ridiculous that someone given the death penalty in, say, 1974 is still working on a book deal about his life in prison in 2001. That's where our justice system fails. Because the courts are so mired down in the appeals process, criminals know that they stand little chance of being actually executed for their crimes. Some of them actually stand a better chance of dying of old age than getting a lethal injection! So where exactly is the deterrent for violent killers in this country? The truth is, we simply don't have one.

As for the people who die who merit life... James, to which people are you referring? I'm a little confused.

[justamom]

valkyrie, I know what you are saying is true in some cases,
that is something that can't be denied. I also agree that Blacks face the brunt of these types of situations. I was wondering if
you or anyone knew of a situaton where an average citizen, with no criminal record had been executed yet later proved not guilty. I'm not saying that it's OK if this were to happen to a criminal, just wondering...or a case of TOTAL misidentification that resulted in death.

I think we all want to believe the evidence would be so overwhelming that it would leave no doubt that the person on trial was guilty. Of course, you have shown this isn't always the case. Still, I believe that is why there are so many laws in place to protect the accussed.

Now, how about children being tried as adults??? The case of the toddler in England comes to mind. Two young boys led him out of a mall and beat him to death. The boys are now 18+ and they want to protect their identities.

[dzrose93]

Originally posted by justamom
Now, how about children being tried as adults??? The case of the toddler in England comes to mind. Two young boys led him out of a mall and beat him to death. The boys are now 18+ and they want to protect their identities.

I personally think that they should be tried as adults. There has been so much research in recent years showing that serial killers start committing violent acts at a young age and then get progressively worse. For that reason, I really think that, in order to prevent more violence, it is best to try children in murder cases as adults. If they are old enough to know right from wrong and old enough to try to cover up their crimes, then they are old enough to pay for those crimes as a grown-up.

As for the 18+ boys that killed the toddler, I don't think they should have their identities protected. The issue makes me think of child molesters who, when released from prison, move into a neighborhood with lots of children or try to get jobs in a toy store or school. I think that the law which requires the police to notify people that a sex offender has moved into the neighborhood is a very good one, and I feel it has probably saved many a person from being victimized.

[AlphaGamDiva]

valkyrie, after re-reading my statements, you are right...i totally need to clairfy and not sound so...bad.

ok, the "great facilities" remark was only about the facilities themselves. there are ppl in there who have beaten, raped, murdered, and God knows what else. to me, if someone throws acid on their head, who cares? they did 10 times that to someone else (although i know not in the case you specified earlier)...kind of a what goes around comes around type of thing. you can't tell me that in a case where a man raped a woman, cut off her breasts and left her for dead that he should be in a place that provides him as much comfort as possible. why should that person receive any more consideration than they gave to their victim? i don't understand why there are ppl who always look out more for the welfare of convicted criminals that they do for the justice of the victim. that's the point of prison...punishment for those who have done wrong, and justice for those who have been wronged. the same for the death penalty. if you take someone's life, you should pay for it with your own.
now, as far as how messed up things are with innocent ppl being convicted...i wish i had a way to prevent that. but i do know that eliminating capital punishment is not the answer. there are times when justice does indeed prevail and the correct people are punished...not everyone is innocent, afterall. i do not by any means think it is ok to punish innocent ppl and everything should be done to prevent this...but at the same time, everything should be done to prevent a murderer from killing again.
and finally, my best friend died unexpectantly last year and i will never be over that loss in my life...the only comfort i have is that knowing that he is in, yes, a better place. again, only my opinion, but i would appreciate not being criticized for that when i have yet to criticize you.

dzrose, well said!

[Hootie]

I haven't finished reading all the posts on the second page of this thread, but I wanted to make one small comment.

I don't know how anyone else would feel if a close friend, family member or loved one were randomly killed but I know that I would be so enraged that I would seek the highest punishment the law allowed. I admit, it doesn't solve much by killing another person i.e. doesn't bring back the loved one, HOWEVER I feel that once you've committed such a brutal crime, you've lost your right to live any normal life.
At any rate, my theory is this - If the above happened to me I would try to forgive with all my heart, but forgiving only goes so far and that doesn't mean forgiveness means letting that person live either. Obviously that person had no regard for life and would probably do the same if allowed to go free. Now wether a person sits in a cell and rots to death the rest of his/her life or dies in the chair or smoke chaimber - they deserve it.

I ask those who aren't pro-death penalty to think how they'd feel if their mother, father, sister, brother, grandma, child, best friend, lover, co-worker were killed malitiously by one of these crazed people...what sort of justification would you want? I find it hard for even the most compassionate people to not want some sort of revenge!

[SuperSister]

Originally posted by Hootie
I ask those who aren't pro-death penalty to think how they'd feel if their mother, father, sister, brother, grandma, child, best friend, lover, co-worker were killed malitiously by one of these crazed people...what sort of justification would you want? I find it hard for even the most compassionate people to not want some sort of revenge!

* I DO TALK ABOUT RELIGION IN THIS POST*

Be warned, i will talk about religion in this post, not with the intent of offending anyone but becuase it is an integral part of my belief structure and to give you insight on why I feel the way I do. Skip this post if you're going to be offended.


I would of course be heartbroken and want them locked away for the rest of their natural lives, but I would also pray that God would grant me the strength and courage to forgive that person for their horrible actions. Holding onto grief and hatred would not do me any good as a person, and the knowledge that I had a hand in sending someone to die for revenge, or so i could feel some sort of vindication would haunt me for the rest of my life. I would have killed someone with the mask of 'it's for justice'. I don't want to get all religious on you guys but since my religion is an important part of my beliefs I would like to point out that the scripture talking about an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is in the old testament. The old testament occured BEFORE Jesus came to earth. Jesus preached a message of peace and forgiveness. Those who because Christians in that era rather than following the stict jewish laws instead followed the way of Christ. The laws in the old testemant were designed to give people a structure to live riteous lives until such a time as they could know Jesus. This is why I feel that it is more important to forgive, not always to forget, but to forgive. In the long term it would do more to hurt me mentally to hold that grudge and look for the death of this person than to forgive them with God's help. My family knows that God forbid, if something were to happen to me as the result of a heinous crime I would not want them to seek the death penalty.