Capital  Punishment

Capital punishment is discussed so extensively and from so many angles, it deserves its own page.  But this is by no means a complete examination of the subject. Opponents of capital punishment have blood on their hands.  Opponents of capital punishment give us names of innocents who would have been killed by the state had their convictions stood and they been actually executed, and a few executed convicts whom they believe might have been innocent.  But proponents can name men and women who really were — not might have been — murdered by convicted murderers while in prison.  The murdered include prison guards, fellow inmates, and innocent men and women outside of prison. The Deaths That Save Lives.  Critics of capital punishment argue that it does not act as a deterrent.  The facts speak for themselves:  Over the past twenty-five years, the murder rate in the U.S. has been cut almost in half. Common Sense on Capital Punishment:  The reliable two-thirds of Americans who have always supported the death penalty probably wouldn't be surprised to find out that study after study has shown that the death penalty deters murders. … Most studies have concluded that some number of murders between three and 18 are prevented for every application of capital punishment. Another Argument for Capital Punishment.  The most common objection opponents offer against capital punishment is that innocents may be executed.  My answer has always been that this is so rare (I do not know of a proved case of mistaken execution in America in the last 50 years) that society must be prepared to pay that terrible price.  Why?  Among other reasons, because more innocents will be killed by murderers who are not executed (in prison, or once released or if they escape) than will be killed by the state in erroneous executions. Why Would Anyone Support the Death Penalty? (Part I).  Once we comprehend this distinction between murder and all other crimes (which can be restituted for), it should be clear that retribution not only justifies execution, it requires it.  Execution is the only correct penalty-in-kind for murder, and retribution is the only value so far analyzed which justifies taking this most precious of payments from someone. U.S. executions hit 1,000.  A man who went on a 1992 Christmas killing spree that left six people dead, including an 18-year-old mother gunned down at a pay phone, was put to death Tuesday.  It marked the state's second execution in just over a week and the 1,000th in the U.S. since capital punishment resumed in 1976. Gruesome details  of the crimes committed by various condemned criminals. Sotomayor Vs. The Death Penalty.  A recently unearthed memo not disclosed on the questionnaire filed with the Senate Judiciary Committee shows that the empathy that the Supreme Court nominee feels is more for the predators among us than their victims.  It also shows that some of the reasons this self-proclaimed "wise Latina" has for opposing capital punishment are bogus and flawed. Democide:  When liberals in the late 1950s decided to tackle crime, how did they go about it?  Through the strange means of decriminalizing criminals.  Lowering prison sentences, emphasizing rehabilitation over punishment, community action over policing.  A series of Supreme Court decisions followed — Mapp, Escebedo, Miranda — disrupting the criminal justice system and effectively evening the odds between criminals and the public.  And the result?  Beginning in 1964 — the year of the Escebedo decision — the murder rate shot up as if strapped to a rocket. Cheapening the death penalty:  On Feb. 15, 1933, a naturalized citizen named Giuseppe Zangara, in attempting to assassinate President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt who was giving a speech in the back of a car in Miami, shot five people, including Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak.  Zangara promptly — within days — pleaded guity to four counts of attempted murder and was sentenced to 80 years in prison.  When Mayor Cermak died 19 days after the shootings, on March 6, 1933, two days after Roosevelt's inauguration (the date has since changed to Jan. 20), Zangara was promptly indicted for first-degree murder.  Because he had intended to commit murder, it was irrelevant that his intended target was not the man he ultimately killed.  Zangara pleaded guilty to the additional murder charge, and on March 20, 1933 — 33 days after the shooting and after spending only 10 days on Death Row, Zangara was executed. Capital-punishment propaganda.  When the Maryland General Assembly meets next month, Gov. Martin O'Malley is expected to push to repeal the state's capital-punishment law.  Since the current death-penalty statute was enacted in 1978, five men have been executed, the most recent being Wesley Baker on Dec. 5, 2005, for murdering a woman in front of her grandchildren during a 1991 robbery in Baltimore County.  In each of his first two years as governor, Mr. O'Malley tried unsuccessfully to end capital punishment in Maryland, and he's determined not to lose a third time. Doctors' board bans work on death row.  An American doctors organisation has quietly decided to revoke the certification of any member who participates in executing a prisoner by lethal injection. Oldest death-row inmate in U.S. dies in Florence prison.  The oldest death-row inmate in the United States, who spent most of his life behind bars, has died of natural causes at age 94. Judge:  No allergy risk proven for Ohio execution.  An inmate scheduled to die next week for raping and strangling a 16-year-old girl has failed to present enough evidence of an allergy to anesthesia that could affect the execution, a federal judge ruled Friday [4/16/2010]. The Editor says... If he would prefer an alternative, let him hang.  Really, since when are condemned prisoners entitled to painless executions?  You may be interested to know that Mr. Durr had a trial by jury and was convicted of aggravated murder; kidnapping; aggravated robbery and rape.* Support for Capital Punishment is Higher than Surveys Indicate.  Polling agencies seldom take into account specific murder cases.  When they do, support for executions is shown to be significantly higher than in generic polls. Ohio man executed for fire deaths of 5 children.   An Ohio man said he was "heartily sorry" before he was executed Tuesday [7/13/2010] for the murders of five children in a 1992 Cincinnati apartment fire he set in an attempt to destroy evidence of a burglary. Death row inmate says he's too mentally ill for execution.  A Tennessee prisoner, condemned to death, is trying to convince a Knoxville judge he is too mentally ill to be executed. Execution of Texan on death row halted.  Just hours away from lethal injection, Jonathan Marcus Green received a stay from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Wednesday [6/30/2010] so that it can further consider the question of his competence to be executed.  The state's highest court for criminal matters stopped the execution following a telephone conference about four hours before Green was to enter the execution chamber.  It then issued orders suggesting it was uncertain over the review of his mental competency. Death penalty overturned in 2003 Staten Island cop killings.  A vicious cop-killer sentenced to die for murdering two undercover NYPD detectives will get a second chance to plead for his life.  A federal appeals court today [6/30/2010] narrowly tossed out the capital punishment for Ronell Wilson in the execution-style slayings of Rodney Andrews and James Nemorin. Powell executed for 1978 slaying of police officer.  Declining to make a final statement, David Lee Powell was executed Tuesday [6/15/2010] for killing an Austin police officer 32 years ago as seven members of his victim's family watched silently from a nearby window. The Editor says... The article above has a number of wonderful things to say about the killer, and almost nothing about the police officer he killed. The Slow Death of the Death Penalty?  Ronnie Lee Gardner deserves to die:  So say the people of Utah, where he killed a bartender in cold blood, then murdered an attorney during an escape attempt.  Gaile Owens also faces death, in Tennessee on September 28, for hiring someone to kill her husband in 1985.  Just after midnight this Friday, barring a last-minute stay, Gardner will become the 28th person put to death in the United States this year. At inmate's request, Utah prepares firing squad.  Barring a last-minute reprieve, Ronnie Lee Gardner will be strapped into a chair, a hood will be placed over his head and a small white target will be pinned over his heart. Georgia man convicted of killing 2 people executed.  A Georgia man convicted of the 1986 shooting deaths of his ex-girlfriend and her 11-year-old niece was executed Wednesday [6/9/2010] by lethal injection after sitting on death row for more than two decades. Grossman execution set for tonight in wildlife officer's slaying.  Peggy Park was 26, just three years out of college on Dec. 13, 1984, when she decided to question two teenage boys she saw in a van after dark on a back road in what is now Brooker Creek Preserve.  Inside was junior high dropout Martin Edward Grossman, 19, and his 17-year-old companion, Thayne Nathan Taylor.  They had a stolen gun.  Grossman was on probation.  He'd already been to prison for grand theft and breaking-and-entering and didn't want to go back. Supreme Court To Face Mecca.  When six Germans and two Americans were suspected of plotting an attack on U.S. munitions plants during World War II, FDR immediately ordered them arrested and tried in a secret military tribunal held behind closed doors at the Department of Justice.  Within weeks, all were found guilty.  Six of the eight, including one U.S. citizen, were given the electric chair.  One German was sentenced to life in prison and the other American citizen — who had turned himself in and revealed the plot to the FBI — got 30 years.  The Supreme Court upheld the secret trial, but didn't get around to producing an opinion until after Old Sparky had rendered its own verdict. A Conservative Manifesto:  [Scroll down]  The news is replete with stories of protesters crowding together outside the gate of a prison holding candlelight vigils on the eve of the execution of a convicted murderer.  There is no consideration with regard to how vile the committed crime may have been.  These half-watt intellects are filled with compassion for their perceived victim of the state.  Bear in mind this group has nothing to say about the thousands executed by Islamic states. Silliest excuse yet: Death row foes now fight the cost of executions.  Nearly 3½ years into a court-ordered suspension of executions, opponents have embraced a new argument:  that Californians can't afford to carry out the death penalty in a constitutional manner.  They contend that by commuting all 682 death row inmates' sentences to life without the possibility of parole, the state could save up to $1 billion over the next five years — a view expected to be offered, and challenged, during a public hearing today [6/30/2009] in Sacramento on proposed changes to the lethal injection procedures. The Editor says... Executions are not that costly.  What really costs the state a lot of money is the years of delays, appeals and legal wrangling over every imaginable technicality.  The state of California is feeding and housing 682 people who should already be dead. Va. man first inmate in over a year to be executed by electrocution.  A former Army counterintelligence worker was executed by electric chair Tuesday for killing a Virginia couple, becoming the first U.S. inmate to die by electrocution in over a year. Toledo killer executed:  Last words are Islamic creed.  [Vernon] Smith was convicted of fatally shooting Sohail Darwish, a 28-year-old immigrant from Saudi Arabia who owned a convenience store in Toledo that Smith and two accomplices robbed.  Even though Darwish complied with the men's orders to hand over money from the cash register and his wallet, Smith shot him in the chest. Ohio executes hitchhiker who shot 3 drivers in '83.  Ohio executed a hitchhiker Thursday [5/13/2010] who admitted to killing one motorist who gave him a ride and shooting two others during a three-week string of shootings that terrorized the Cincinnati area in 1983. Keep Life Without Parole, Life After Death.  [Scroll down slowly]  If you follow these issues, you know that the most unrepentant sociopaths will exploit any opening.  Think Kevin Cooper, who killed chiropractors Doug and Peggy Ryen, their 10-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old houseguest in 1983 after he escaped from the California Institution for Men at Chino, where he was serving time under a phony name for burglary.  DNA evidence has proved Cooper's guilt — yet from Death Row, he still finds lawyers who will ignore the evidence, change Cooper's story and assert that he is not guilty. California killer's case back before Supreme Court.  Fernando Belmontes was sentenced to death in 1982 for murdering a 19-year-old woman.  The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned his sentence three times. Richard Allen Davis:  Safe on Death Row.  When a jury found Richard Allen Davis guilty of the murder of Petaluma's 12-year-old Polly Klaas in 1996, Davis puckered his lips and extended a middle finger to TV cameras.  Later, Davis was sentenced to death, and outraged California voters passed a three-strikes sentencing law.  From death row now, Davis still is puckering up and extending his finger at the public — and the public is paying for it. Strong push to ban death penalty falls in Montana.  A state House committee vote likely has ended a strong push this year to ban capital punishment in Montana.  The ban had passed the GOP-controlled Montana Senate.  But the House Judiciary Committee's 10-8 vote against a ban Monday [3/30/2009] makes it difficult, but not impossible, to act on it further. New Mexico lawmakers vote to repeal death penalty.  New Mexico state lawmakers voted on Friday to repeal the death penalty and replace it with a sentence of life imprisonment without parole.  The Democratic-controlled state Senate voted 24-18 for a bill to revoke the death penalty, a source at the chief clerk's office said. New Mexico governor abolishes capital punishment.  Gov. Bill Richardson, who has supported capital punishment, signed legislation to repeal New Mexico's death penalty, calling it the "most difficult decision in my political life."  The new law replaces lethal injection with a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Che Guevara; a Study in Stupidity, Sadism and Failure.  Here's a "guerrilla hero" who in real life never fought in a guerrilla war.  When he finally brushed up against one, he was routed.  Here's a cold-blooded murderer who executed thousands without trial, who claimed that judicial evidence was an "unnecessary bourgeois detail," who stressed that "revolutionaries must become cold-killing machines motivated by pure hate," who stayed up till dawn for months at a time signing death warrants for innocent and honorable men, whose office in La Cabana had a window where he could watch the executions — and today his T-shirts adorn people who oppose capital punishment! Debunking Myths about Capital Punishment:  There have been studies validating the efficacy of capital punishment for more than thirty years, yet, if all you knew was what the mainstream media reported you would think science had proven otherwise.  The good news, though, is that despite the well-funded, anti-capital punishment misinformation campaign, helped by a liberal media, the public still favors capital punishment. Majority of Americans favor death penalty:  poll.  The majority of Americans support the death penalty but nearly 40 percent think their moral beliefs would disqualify them from serving on a jury in a capital trial, a poll showed on Saturday.  Conducted for the Death Penalty Information Center, a group that opposes capital punishment, the poll showed 62 percent of those surveyed support executing convicted murderers. The death penalty's deterrence.  Twelve studies authored by professors from a number of renowned universities suggest that the death penalty saves lives by deterring criminals from committing more homicides.  Perhaps the Supreme Court should review these cases while considering its de facto moratorium on executions, considering not only the state's role in punishing criminals but also its role in protecting innocents. The Peril of Non-Executions.  Opponents of capital punishment have succeeded in keeping the emphasis on the possibility of executing an innocent person, instead of the lives that have already been taken by those spared the death penalty. Condemned Utah killer Ronnie Lee Gardner could face firing squad.  A condemned killer appears headed for a date with death in Utah that could see him sit before a firing squad — a development that would likely re-ignite protests over an antiquated, Old West-style of justice. Holder Rules Out Death Penalty for Illegal Aliens Charged With Murder.  Attorney General Eric Holder has directed prosecutors in a federal conspiracy and murder trial not to seek the death penalty for three El Salvadoran men who are in the United States illegally.  The three are accused of robbing and shooting Claros Luna on July 29, 2009 in Alexandria, Va., just a few miles from the Justice Department, as Luna transported a prostitute from Maryland to Virginia. Virginia executes inmate by electrocution.  A Virginia man has been executed for killing a teen girl and then bragging about it to prosecutors once he thought he could not face the death penalty. Cost is killing the death penalty.  After decades of moral arguments reaching biblical proportions, after long, twisted journeys to the nation's highest court and back, the death penalty may be abandoned by several states for a reason having nothing to do with right or wrong:  Money. Washington prepares for first execution since 2001.  Cal Coburn Brown surprised investigators with his reply to this routine question at the end of a lengthy police interview:  Anything else you want to tell us?  Brown — arrested in Palm Springs, Calif. for an attack on a woman at a hotel — answered with explicit details about how he had tortured and murdered a 22-year-old woman in the Seattle suburbs just days earlier.  Her body was found in the trunk of her car. Senate bill limits capital punishment.  Maryland lawmakers struck a heavy blow to Gov. Martin O'Malley's hopes of repealing the death penalty Tuesday [3/3/2009] by twice amending the bill he favored in such a way that capital punishment would continue but with a more limited scope. Feeling Murderers' Pain:  The Supreme Court this week heard arguments that lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment.  Euthanasia advocates consider it a blessing for the deathly ill.  Yet it's cruel for the just plain deadly. … Believers in a "living Constitution" forget that at the time the Bill of Rights — and the Eighth Amendment — was written, "cruel and unusual punishment" was probably considered by the Founding Fathers to be things like drawing and quartering, burning at the stake, and crucifixion.  Death by hanging or firing squad was considered quite civilized. Death row inmate claims allergy to lethal injection.  An Ohio death row inmate is attempting to postpone his imminent appointment with the lethal injection gurney by claiming a possible allergy to the anaesthetic used by the state to dispatch its condemned prisoners. The voice-over announcer says... Tell your doctor if you experience euphoria, hallucinations, coma, or death, as these may be signs of serious side effects.  Ask your doctor if Pavulon is right for you! Does lethal injection amount to human experimentation?  Currently 35 of the 36 states that allow capital punishment carry out the sentence using lethal injection.  Typically, each inmate receives a dose of the anaesthetic sodium thiopental, a shot of potassium chloride to induce cardiac arrest, and pancuronium bromide, a potent paralytic to cut off breathing.  Each dose is supposed to be administered in large enough quantities to be individually lethal, and inmates ideally should die from 2 to 8 minutes after the procedure starts. Lethal injection issue divides Supreme Court.  The Supreme Court appeared divided today over whether the drugs commonly injected to execute prisoners risk causing excruciating pain in violation of the Constitution.  Several justices indicated a willingness to preserve the three-drug cocktail that is authorized by three dozen states that allow executions. The Editor says... Do murderers give any such consideration to the pain inflicted on their victims?  Of course not.  Why then are they entitled to such consideration? Update: States' death row injections get OK after high court ruling.  Many states wasted little time trying to get executions back on track following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding the use of a three-drug lethal cocktail.  Almost immediately, Virginia lifted its death penalty moratorium. Mississippi and Oklahoma said they would seek execution dates for convicted murderers, and other states were ready to follow. A matter of life and death.  I like what Chief Justice Roberts said in his majority opinion:  "Some risk of pain is inherent in any method of execution — no matter how humane — if only from the prospect of error in following the required procedure. ... It is clear, then, that the Constitution does not demand the avoidance of all risk of pain in carrying out executions." Court lifts stays of execution for 3 death row inmates.  The Supreme Court cleared the way Monday for Alabama, Mississippi and Texas to set new execution dates for three inmates who were granted last-minute reprieves by the justices last year. Georgia executes killer; first in U.S. since lethal injection upheld.  Georgia has executed William Earl Lynd, the first inmate put to death since the U.S. Supreme Court ended a seven-month moratorium with its ruling last month that lethal injection is constitutional.  Lynd was executed at 7:51 p.m. ET for kidnapping and killing Ginger Moore, his live-in girlfriend nearly 20 years ago.  She was 26 years old when Lynd shot her three times in the face and head on Dec. 23, 1988. Marek executed for murdering woman.  A Florida man was executed Wednesday [8/19/2009] for murdering a 45-year-old mother of two who was raped, tortured, and strangled after a car she was in broke down on a highway 26 years ago. Virginia Inmate Forcibly Carried to Death Chamber.  An inmate declared his innocence Thursday after he was forcibly carried into Virginia's death chamber, where he was executed for gunning down a police officer.  Edward Nathaniel Bell, who was convicted of killing the officer during a foot chase a decade ago, was pronounced dead at 9:11 p.m. Thursday at the Greensville Correctional Center.  When the door between Bell's cell and the death chamber opened, the inmate thrust his hips backward and wouldn't step toward to the gurney where the lethal injection was administered.  Six stocky corrections officers pulled him through the doorway and lifted him onto the gurney. Tompkins Executed For Teen's Murder.  It took Wayne Tompkins about five minutes to fatally strangle his girlfriend's 15-year-old daughter.  Twenty five years later, it took nine minutes for the death row inmate to die by lethal injection at the Florida State Prison in Starke.  Family members of the victim, Lisa Lea DeCarr, struggled to reconcile how a man who killed so brutally could die with such seeming serenity. Va. House votes to extend death penalty.  The House has passed bills to expand capital punishment to include those who assist in a murder but don't commit the actual killing and to those who kill an on-duty fire marshal or auxiliary police officer.  The chamber passed the bills on Tuesday [2/10/2009]. Judge orders lethal injection in yacht-murder case.  Convicted murderer Skylar Deleon was sentenced today [4/10/2009] to die by lethal injection for three slayings, including the murders at sea of a couple forced to sign over ownership of their yacht, then tied to an anchor and thrown overboard. Man convicted in killing 4 people executed.  A former Houston security guard was executed Wednesday evening for gunning down four people, including his ex-girlfriend and her two small children, during a shooting frenzy more than a dozen years ago. Convicted murderer-rapist executed in Houston killing.  Houston rapist-murderer Johnny Ray Johnson, condemned for beating and stomping a woman to death when she refused to participate in sex, died in Texas' death house Thursday with a hymn on his lips.  In a rambling final statement, Johnson denounced the Texas death penalty, calling Livingston's Allan Polunsky Unit, home of the state's death row, "a dungeon." Cop killer gets 1st NH death sentence in 49 years.  A jury issued New Hampshire's first death sentence in a half century Thursday to a man who fatally shot a Manchester police officer to avoid arrest two years ago.  Lawyers for Michael Addison had sought a life sentence, arguing that he acted recklessly, not intentionally, and suffered from an abusive childhood and possible brain damage from his mother's heavy drinking while she was pregnant. The Editor says... Lawyers always come up with a tear-jerker story to try to establish the defendant as the real victim.  Was the jury supposed to let the defendant get away with murder because his mother drank a lot? Man executed who raped mother; killed daughters.  A Florida man convicted of shooting two young sisters in the head after raping and shooting their mother was executed Tuesday after a nearly two-hour delay while authorities awaited final rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court.  Richard "Ric Ric" Henyard, 34, was pronounced dead at 8:16 p.m.  He had been condemned for the death of 7-year-old Jamilya Lewis and her 3-year-old sister, Jasmine. World Court:  U.S. must delay Mexican death sentences.  The World Court ordered the United States on Wednesday to do all it could to halt the imminent executions of five Mexicans until the court makes a final judgment in a dispute over suspects' rights. Texas Turns Aside Pressure on Execution of 5 Mexicans.  Despite pleas from the White House and the State Department, as well as an international court order to review their cases, Texas will execute five Mexicans on death row, a spokeswoman for the governor said Thursday [7/17/2008].  The first of the executions — that of José Ernesto Medellín, 33, convicted in the 1993 rape and murder of two teenage girls here — is scheduled for Aug. 5. The Editor says... Notice that the article in the New York Times includes a big picture of the murderer's grandmother.  I guess we're supposed to feel sorry for her, not the people her son murdered. Medellin executed for rape, murder of Houston teens.  The state of Texas defied an international court and executed Jose Ernesto Medellin late Tuesday [8/5/2008] after the U.S. Supreme Court denied a stay of execution for the killer in the 1993 Houston gang rape-murders of two teenage girls. Texas Defies World Court Executes Condemned Mexican.  Texas defied the World Court and executed a Mexican national by lethal injection on Tuesday [8/5/2008] over the objections of the international judicial body and neighboring Mexico. Florida holds 1st execution since botched method.  Florida on Tuesday carried out its first execution since a botched lethal injection procedure prompted a moratorium and state investigation.  Gov. Charlie Crist's office said Mark Dean Schwab was put to death by lethal injection at 6:15 p.m.  Schwab was convicted of kidnapping, raping and killing 11-year-old boy. Killer says he's too fat to safely execute.  A death row inmate scheduled for execution in October says he's so fat that Ohio executioners would have trouble finding his veins and that his weight could diminish the effectiveness of one of the lethal injection drugs. The Editor says... Bad news, chump.  There are plenty of veins, if you know where to look.  A good R.N. can find a vein on anybody.  And what is a "safe" execution, anyway?  After what this guy did to his victims, is he entitled to the "safety" of a painless execution? Update: Ohio executes man who argued he was too fat to die.  Ohio executed a 5-foot-7, 267-pound double murderer Tuesday who argued his obesity made death by lethal injection inhumane.  Richard Cooey, 41, had argued in numerous legal challenges that his weight problem would make it difficult for prison staff to find suitable veins to deliver the deadly chemicals, a problem that delayed previous executions in the state. Illegal immigrant executed for murder of Arlington store manager.  An illegal immigrant from Honduras who claimed his treaty rights were violated when he was arrested for a robbery-murder in Arlington was executed Thursday evening. [8/7/2008] … The Supreme Court, ruling about 2½ hours before his scheduled execution time, rejected his appeal without dissent. Destruction in black America is self-inflicted.  Nearly all black homicide is intraracial — more than nine out of 10 black murder victims in the United States are killed by black murderers.  So applying the death penalty in more cases where the victim is black would mean sending more black men to death row. How ironic! Oklahoma death penalty foe commits suicide.  Defense attorney Lisa McCalmont was well-known nationally as an outspoken critic of lethal injection and amassed a trove of information about problems with the three-drug cocktail that is at the very center of a case the U.S. Supreme Court will hear early next year.  Colleagues say McCalmont, 49, was looking forward to the Supreme Court case as a momentous event in her career.  But then, last week, she hanged herself at her home in Norman — a suicide that stunned and baffled some of those who knew her. Death Penalty's Deadly Vacation.  The Supreme Court on Tuesday effectively halted U.S. executions via lethal injection until it can rule on a challenge to the constitutionality of a particular execution "cocktail."  This is just the latest example of the whittling away of the death penalty — the courts have already cut executions by over a third since 1999.  But this latest suspension of executions is likely to demonstrate yet again that the death penalty deters crime. A judge drags his feet to avoid enforcing the death penalty. Federal judge in Ohio stripped of five death penalty cases.  A chief federal judge took away five death penalty cases from a colleague criticized by some prosecutors for taking as many as eight years to issue appeals rulings. … U.S. District Judge Walter Rice … is based in Dayton and was appointed by President Carter in 1980. Judicial temperament?  A poster of Che Guevara hangs on the wall of a judge who found Ohio's death penalty law constitutionally lacking.  But his idol Che was not very respectful of the niceties of justice, and loved to watch firing squads at work. Court gives nod to lethal injection.  Florida's Supreme Court ruled yesterday [11/02/2007] that the state's lethal injection procedures are not cruel and unusual, which could clear the way for the first execution in the US since September.  Lethal injection procedures are under review by the US Supreme Court.  The nation's highest court has allowed only one execution since it agreed in September to hear a case from Kentucky that raises a similar challenge. Man gets life in rape, death of 17-month-old.  A three-judge panel decided against the death penalty for a man convicted of smothering and killing a 17-month-old boy as he raped the child.  The judges deliberated for more than 3 hours and were split 2-1 in their decision to sentence John White, 28, to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The Editor says... I guess the judges are saving the death penalty for someone who has committed a really serious crime. Inmate gets life, plus 301 years.  A state prison inmate who shot a correctional officer in the head while the officer pleaded for his life was sentenced to life without parole yesterday, to the displeasure of the victim's family and co-workers who had hoped for a death sentence.  "You are an evil man," Judge Joseph P. Manck told defendant Brandon T. Morris, 22.  But the judge said factors, including Morris' emotional immaturity and his history of "staggering" childhood abuse, outweighed the state's arguments for execution. [Once again I ask, for whom are the judges reserving the death penalty?] Child Rape Tests Limits Of Death Penalty.  Ever since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty more than 30 years ago, justices have been finding ways to limit it.  In the intervening years, they have employed their interpretations of society's "evolving standards of decency" to remove juvenile and mentally retarded killers from death row. The Editor says... Those "evolving standards of decency" are exactly what's wrong with this country.  No civilization can last very long without absolute standards of right and wrong. Texas to argue for right to execute child rapists at Supreme Court.  The case before the court, Kennedy vs. Louisiana, concerns a Louisiana law and the case of a Jefferson Parrish, La., man convicted of raping his 8-year-old stepdaughter.  But striking down that law could call into question Texas' 2007 "Jessica's Law," which allows the execution of certain repeat child sex offenders.  The Supreme Court ruled 30 years ago that death was an excessive penalty for the aggravated rape of a 16 year-old girl. Our States' Right to Kill the Rapist:  Our Founding Fathers would never have imagined the constitutionality of executing rapists to be a serious question.  Indeed my own state, North Carolina, considered rape — along with murder, burglary, and arson — to be punishable by death for the better part of the 20th Century.  None of this would be controversial until some time after the [Supreme] Court — led by Chief Justice Earl Warren — announced that it had somehow inherited a new standard for declaring statutes in violation of the Eighth Amendment's ban on Cruel and Unusual Punishment. Update: High court:  Don't execute child rapists.  The Supreme Court on Wednesday outlawed executions of people convicted of raping a child. … In a 5-4 vote, the court said the Louisiana law allowing the death penalty to be imposed for raping a child violates the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Supreme Court Rejects Death Penalty for Child Rape.  The death penalty is unconstitutional as a punishment for the rape of a child, a sharply divided Supreme Court ruled Wednesday [6/25/2008].  The 5-to-4 decision overturned death penalty laws in Louisiana and five other states.  The only two men in the country who have been sentenced to death for the crime of child rape, both in Louisiana, will receive new sentences of life without parole. Texas and the Death Penalty:  Forty states have the death penalty on the books, but only 34 have carried out executions since the Supreme Court permitted states to resume capital punishment in 1976.  None come close to Texas, which has carried out 405 executions over three decades.  Virginia, with 98 executions, is a distant second.  What accounts for this Lone Star peculiarity, that some find horrifying? Nebraska Supreme Court rules electrocution unconstitutional.  The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled Friday [2/8/2008] that electrocution is cruel and unusual punishment, outlawing the electric chair in the only U.S. state that still used it as its sole means of execution.  In the landmark ruling, the court said the state Legislature may vote to have a death penalty, just not one that offends rights under the state constitution. Bush Faces Off With Texas Over Execution.  The president wants to enforce a decision by the International Court of Justice that found the convictions of Medellin and 50 other Mexican-born prisoners violated their rights to legal help as outlined in the 1963 Vienna Convention.  That is the same court President Bush has since said he plans to ignore if it makes similar decisions affecting state criminal laws. Does Foreign Law Govern US Courts?  First, the US has deliberately not approved the treaty that would give the International Court of Justice any jurisdiction over American courts and American law.  Second, any defendant can waive any rights that he has, by not raising them, and Medellin did not raise any objection based on the Mexican consulate not being notified until years after his original conviction. Update: Supreme Court backs Texas in dispute with Bush.  Texas can ignore President Bush and an international court in refusing to reopen the case of a Mexican on death row for rape and murder, the Supreme Court said Tuesday [3/25/2008].  The court said Bush exceeded his authority when he tried to intervene on behalf of Jose Ernesto Medellin, facing the death penalty for killing two teenagers nearly 15 years ago. Canadian viewpoint: Bring back the death penalty.  For the record, I support capital punishment.  Society has the right to permanently remove criminals for grievous offenses.  The public is clearly on side as polls over recent decades reveal large numbers of Canadians support capital punishment.  The death penalty is actually one of the most humane ways of dealing with the worst criminals.  Their quick death does not provide true justice for what many have done. Studies say death penalty deters crime.  Anti-death penalty forces have gained momentum in the past few years, with a moratorium in Illinois, court disputes over lethal injection in more than a half-dozen states and progress toward outright abolishment in New Jersey. … What gets little notice, however, is a series of academic studies over the last half-dozen years that claim to settle a once hotly debated argument — whether the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder.  The analyses say yes. Texas Governor Goes Wobbly.  Texas Governor Rick Perry … commuted the sentence of a worthless hoodlum that had already lived for eleven years too long as a guest of the state after being involved in a wild rampage that took the life of a young man in 1996.  Kenneth Foster was part of a gun-toting quartet of violent street thugs who had spent the night robbing and pistol-whipping everyone they could find as they terrorized the streets of San Antonio more than a decade ago. Supreme Court blocks Mississippi execution.  The Supreme Court halted an execution in Mississippi on Tuesday [10/30/2007], less than an hour before a convicted killer was scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection.  The last-minute reprieve for Earl Wesley Berry is the third granted by the justices since they agreed late last month to decide a challenge to Kentucky's lethal injection procedures. Death penalty advocate studies Holton execution.  A documentary regarding the execution of convicted murderer Daryl Holton is being filmed in Shelbyville this week by a New York School of Law professor who is a death penalty advocate.  "The thing about the Holton case is that most Americans worry about the death penalty is that an innocent person might be executed," writer-director Ted Schillinger said between shots at the Shelbyville Times-Gazette newsroom on Monday.  "In the Holton case, the offender is absolutely guilty of a truly heinous crime." Convicted Child Killer Holton Executed.  A man convicted of murdering four children with an assault rifle was executed Wednesday, becoming the first Tennessee inmate put to death by electrocution since 1960.  Daryl Holton, 45, had confessed to shooting his three young sons and their half-sister in 1997 in the town of Shelbyville, about 50 miles south of Nashville. Capital punishment on decline in county.  On Tuesday night Harris County hit the century mark in executions, which places it ahead of any other state — not county, but state — in the nation. Virginia is close with 98, but the gap will only widen.  Of the 380 Texas inmates awaiting execution, Harris County can claim almost a third of them. Executions down in U.S. but not in Texas.  The convicted killer of a 3-year-old boy is set to die this week, the first of five lethal injections scheduled this month as Texas bucks a national trend and bolsters its standing as the most active in carrying out capital punishment. Lobbying intense on death penalty.  The Council of State, a panel of top elected leaders that will plunge into the death-penalty debate today [2/6/2007], has been inundated with e-mail messages, letters and phone calls from people who want it to ask the legislature to decide what role doctors should play in executions. On Penalty Of Death:  Will the execution of Saddam Hussein have any impact on the fate of convicted cop killer Ronell Wilson?  Jurors who on December 20 convicted Wilson of the deaths of undercover detectives Rodney Andrews and James Nemorin will be weighing the death penalty as an option when the penalty phase of the trial begins January 10. Lethal injection blues:  Opponents of the death penalty have been rummaging through their bag of tricks and come up with the theory that lethal injection amounts to "cruel" punishment. Appeals court lifts stay on Missouri executions.  A federal appeals court lifted a more than year-old stay on executions in Missouri on Friday, refusing to block capital punishment while a death-row inmate asks the U.S. Supreme Court to declare the state's form of lethal injection to be an unconstitutionally cruel punishment. Tennessee cop killer's execution back on — for now.  Lawyers for convicted cop killer Philip Workman and Tennessee prosecutors were locked in a federal court battle Monday [5/7/2007] over Workman's execution, scheduled for early Wednesday [5/9/2007]. … Workman, in an interview with CNN last month, said he feared what lethal injection might do.  "It almost makes me want to choose the electric chair," Workman said. [You should have thought of that before pulling the trigger, Mr. Workman.] Death penalty decision a bad first step.  The latest federal judge to rule against the constitutionality of a state's death penalty is U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel, who issued a ruling Friday [12/15/2006] that found California's lethal injection protocol to be "intolerable under the Constitution."  Chalk up the ruling as a victory for Michael Morales, who was sentenced to death for raping and murdering 17-year-old Terri Winchell of Lodi, Calif., in 1981. Cruel and Unusual Punishment?  Before too much blood spills from "bleeding heart liberals," it might be helpful to look at Mr. Diaz's criminal resume.  According to court records, Diaz was convicted of second-degree murder in his native Puerto Rico.  He escaped from prison there and also from Connecticut's Hartford Correctional Center in 1981.  In Hartford, he held one guard at knifepoint while another was beaten.  Diaz was responsible for three other inmates escaping with him. Assembly panel OKs doctor ban at executions.  An Assembly committee voted yesterday [4/17/2006] to bar physicians from participating in executions after a frank debate that invoked abortion in a warning that doctors should be careful when they ask lawmakers to draw their ethical boundaries. Condemned can claim injection is too painful.  The Supreme Court opened the door today [6/12/2006] to new constitutional challenges to lethal injection, the method used by most states and the federal government to execute death row inmates. Lawyers say executions are unconstitutional.  First a sedative courses through a condemned inmate's bloodstream, then a paralyzing agent and finally a heart-stopping drug.  To witnesses viewing the execution at San Quentin State Prison, it's like watching a man take a nap for about 10 minutes. [In all the history of crime and punishment, the condemned criminal's absolute comfort has never been a great concern, and certainly was not guaranteed.  A prisoner on death row must eventually pay a price for his or her crime, and when the time comes, it is not painless.  Let us remember the pain inflicted on the victims, to whom no such courtesy was extended.] The clay feet of liberal saints.  That Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty is no surprise to those who've looked into the case.  But that didn't stop the martyrdom campaign.  Their execution was used to galvanize everyone from establishment liberals to the very, very hard left.  Josef Stalin publicly lamented it.  Protests erupted in the capitals of Europe and across the U.S.  A young Felix Frankfurter staked his reputation on their innocence. Virginia killer's sanity questioned as execution looms.  It's a little late for the insanity defense — His trial is over. Amnesty condemns Saddam trial, death sentences.  Amnesty International has condemned the death sentences handed to Saddam Hussein and two of his senior allies, describing their trial as a "shabby affair, marred by serious flaws". The London-based human rights group — which opposes capital punishment — said the trial should have helped the process of establishing justice and the rule of law in Iraq but was in fact "deeply flawed and unfair". [Are they trying to say that Saddam Hussein is without his flaws and is always perfectly fair?] Fast-track executions, Thomas says.  Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas unveiled sweeping proposals that he says will speed up death penalty cases, which take years to crawl through the legal system. The wrong way to restore the death penalty.  The governor [of Massachusetts] is right to support capital punishment.  He is right as a matter of justice:  Juries ought to have the option of meting out the very worst punishment to the very worst offenders.  And he is right as a matter of democratic governance:  Massachusetts voters have long backed the death penalty — in 1982 they amended their Constitution to say so explicitly — but their wishes have been thwarted by the state Legislature and supreme court. Death penalty moratorium supporters try again to block executions.  Death penalty moratorium supporters will try again this week to put a hold on executions in California, the state with the largest death row in the country. Remorseless killer executed at Lucasville.  Remorseless to the end, Darrell Ferguson was executed today for the Christmastime murders of three elderly, disabled Dayton residents in 2001.  Ferguson, 28, died by injection at the 10:21 a.m. at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville. Spewing curses, killer is put to death.  Joseph Nichols, condemned for the murder of a 64-year-old Houston convenience store clerk, died in the state's death house Wednesday with a curse on his lips.  He was the eighth killer executed in Texas this year, the second this week. Reagan's common sense on capital punishment, crime, and moral absolutes.  A victory for state rights, justice, and a safer America came last Monday [6/26/2006] when the Alito-led Supreme Court upheld a State of Kansas law that favors capital punishment when the evidence for or against imposing death is equal. No race bias seen in death penalty demand.  A study by the Rand Corp. think tank failed to find racial bias among U.S. federal prosecutors seeking the death penalty in criminal cases.  The study by the Santa Monica, Calif.-based group examined the files of 652 defendants charged with capital offenses between Jan. 1, 1995 and July 31, 2000.  Rand said it was one of the most thorough examinations ever of federal death penalty prosecutions. The Pope, Richard Speck and the death penalty:  If Richard Speck isn't a textbook example of why capital punishment is warranted, he'll do until a better one comes along.  Slowly and methodically, he snuffed out the lives of the young women.  He strangled five of his victims and stabbed the other three.  He raped one before killing her. Virginia brings back electric chair for execution.  A convicted murderer was executed in the electric chair in Virginia [7/20/2006], becoming the first person in the United States to be put to death by electrocution in more than two years. Time Magazine's Anti-Death Penalty Cover Boy Proven Guilty By DNA Test.  Way back in 1992 Roger Keith Coleman was Time magazine's cover boy against the death penalty.  Time ran the following over a photo of Coleman in chains:  "This Man Might Be Innocent, This Man Is Due To Die."  Fast forward to 2006 and DNA tests have proved Coleman was in fact rightfully convicted of raping and killing his 19-year-old sister-in-law. DNA Tests Confirm Guilt of Executed Man.  New DNA tests confirmed the guilt of a man who went to his death in Virginia's electric chair in 1992 proclaiming his innocence, the governor said Thursday [1/12/2006]. The Editor says... Almost everyone in prison claims to be innocent.  On the other hand, here is a case where a guy on death row could very well be innocent: Maybe, or maybe not.  A man's life hangs in the balance. Whose judgment do you trust, twelve duly appointed jurors or one lone blogger?  Normally, I'd say "the jury," but in the case of Cory Maye things may not be what they seem. Stay of Execution Denied for Police Officer's Killer.  A convicted killer who argued that the state's use of lethal injection was cruel and unusual punishment was put to death in Starke after the U.S. Supreme Court denied him a stay.  Clarence Hill, 48, was executed for the 1982 murder of a Pensacola police officer in a savings and loan robbery. The Editor says... 24 years on death row is at least 23 years too long.  In this case, it was half a lifetime. Outrage over honor for cop-killer inmate.  Cop-killer Leslie Ann Nelson, 48, a transsexual go-go dancer whose name was Glenn Nelson before a sex-change operation at age 34, was convicted of killing Camden County law enforcement officers John McLaughlin and John Norcross during a 1995 standoff in Haddon Heights.  She was removed from death row, but has an upcoming death-penalty trial in which she wants to represent herself.  Juries have twice decided she should die, and twice those sentences were overturned by the state Supreme Court. Judge says the 'Railroad Killer' Can Die Next Week.  A judge ruled Wednesday [6/21/2006] that serial killer Angel Maturino Resendiz, who gained notoriety as the "Railroad Killer" linked to at least 15 murders across the country, is mentally competent to be executed next week for the 1998 rape-slaying of a Texas doctor. [Why wait until next week?] Frail, blind convicted killer executed in California.  Clarence Allen was put to death by lethal injection early Tuesday [1/17/2006] after failed efforts to convince Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the US Supreme Court that he was in such poor health that killing him would be cruel. [Who were the people putting up such resistance to this execution? Aren't they the same people who are in favor of assisted suicide for sickly old people?] Scott Peterson will probably die of old age.  California's chief justice, Ronald George, acknowledged that an appeals process that is "in many ways dysfunctional" will keep Peterson alive for decades to come.  "The leading cause of death on [California's] death row is old age."  But no chief justice should be glad that the judicial system he presides over cannot do its job. Scott Peterson transferred to San Quentin.  Since 1978 executions are just the third-leading cause of death for California's Death Row inmates.  The first is natural causes and the second is suicide.  The earthquake state has executed 11 people in the past 27 years — despite having 644 inmates on Death Row.  Editor's note:   According to news reports I've heard, Scott Peterson will be in a cell by himself, will eat meals by himself, and will exercise outside every other day.  He doesn't have to work, his meals, clothing and housing are provided at no cost (to him), and he isn't bothered by telemarketers.  What a great life!  This kind of "punishment" is exactly the reason that the death penalty isn't an effective deterrent.  If he had been dragged out of the courtroom and executed the day he was found guilty, (after a lengthy, fair and well-documented trial) the message to future murderers would be loud and clear. Capital Punishment:  Justice & Deterrence:  Crime always demands a suitable punishment, and to fail to punish crime is to degrade and disrespect the rights of every other citizen. Inmate survives first execution.  A double murderer was put to death in Ohio but not until after one of his veins had collapsed, causing the condemned man to sit up and tell his executioners, "It's not working", officials said. The Editor says... Lethal injection was mandated by many states because it is supposed to be completely painless.  An execution, in my opinion, should be mercifully quick, even if not pain-free. Is "putting down" a murderer "cruel and unusual"?  Convicted cop killer Clarence Hill had his day in the U.S. Supreme Court this week as the Justices heard arguments that executing him by lethal injection would violate the 8th Amendment's prohibition against inflicting cruel and unusual punishments. China's hi-tech 'death van':  After trials of the mobile execution service were launched quietly three years ago — then hushed up to prevent an international row about the abuse of human rights before the Olympics last summer — these vehicles are now being deployed across China.  The number of executions is expected to rise to a staggering 10,000 people this year (not an impossible figure given that at least 68 crimes — including tax evasion and fraud — are punishable by death in China). The case of Mumia Abu-Jamal: Abu-Jamal's conviction upheld, death sentence questioned.  College kids march with his face on placards, chanting a mantra that has been oft-repeated throughout the world:  "Free Mumia!" … But others insist that Mumia Abu-Jamal is not the martyr supporters have tried to make him.  Instead, they say, he's a manipulative, cold-blooded cop-killer who used his talents as a radio reporter and his resume as a black activist to hoodwink his ill-informed backers into proclaiming his innocence. Mumia Abu-Jamal Loses Bid For New Trial.  Mumia Abu-Jamal has lost his bid for a new trial in the killing of a Philadelphia police officer in 1981.  The Supreme Court says in an order Monday it will not take up Abu-Jamal's claims that prosecutors improperly excluded blacks from the jury that convicted him of murdering Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. Fry the cop killer.  This case has dragged on for 3 decades, a cause celebre to the left.  This cold-blooded murderer was a commencement speaker once.  Insane.  He deserves to be executed already. Who Wants To Free Mumia Now?  Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal seeking a new trial for death-row inmate and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted in the 1981 shooting of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner.  Earlier, a lower court rescinded Abu-Jamal's death penalty, which prosecutors have asked to be reinstated.  Meanwhile, as the Philadelphia Inquirer reported, last week's ruling "virtually guarantees that the internationally known death-row inmate will never be freed." The Editor says... I think I see what's going to happen next -- a presidential pardon. Abu-Jamal supporters meet, to seek White House help.  Stung by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling last week denying a new trial for Mumia Abu-Jamal, supporters of the internationally known death-row inmate met yesterday at a church in West Philadelphia and said they planned to seek some type of presidential intervention on his behalf. The Stanley Williams subsection: Credibility, executed.  Death penalty opponents — with the help of a sympathetic media — hone their statistical legerdemain, suggesting that everyone who's gotten off death row in recent years was innocent, when in fact many just had flawed trials.  And, of course, there's all the America bashing from a crowd that can cheer Yasser Arafat's Peace Prize but also can call Schwarzenegger a murderer with a straight face. He went to the penitentiary but showed no penitence. The "Redemption" of Stanley 'Tookie' Williams.  Williams claims redemption, but refuses to accept responsibility for murdering four innocent people.  Williams shot one victim, Albert Owens, who worked at a 7-Eleven, twice in the back, after Owens pleaded for his life.  Williams, 11 days later, gunned down the owners of a small motel, a family of three. Toot, toot, tookie, goodbye.  Although, intellectually, I can grasp the point of view of those morally opposed to capital punishment, emotionally I am unable to fathom how they can congregate outside prisons and hold candlelight vigils for mass murderers.  Wouldn't their time be better spent visiting the burial sites of the victims, and leaving flowers instead of candle wax behind? The legacy of Tookie Williams.  Convicted murderer of four and founder of the notorious Crips gang, Tookie Williams, is gone, executed under the death penalty of the state of California.  Now those who protested his conviction, and worked for his clemency, want him to be remembered as a hero. Martyrdom?  Martyrs die for a cause.  Williams died for executing four unarmed people during two 1979 robberies, shooting a woman in the face, and laughing uncontrollably at the gurgling sounds a male victim made as he died in agony. Death Penalty Double Standard:  Tookie vs. Allen.  Countless articles were written bemoaning Tookie's loss and news anchors spoke glowingly of his supposed contributions to ending gang violence.  That Tookie himself was the founder of the notorious "Crips" gang, responsible for so much murder and mayhem over the years, didn't seem to enter into the equation.  Neither did the four people he murdered in cold blood. This is what "swift and sure" means... Prosecutor says Guilty Saddam would hang quickly.  The Iraqi High Tribunal's chief prosecutor says Saddam Hussein will hang immediately if he is found guilty on charges relating to deaths of 148 Shiites. … "If the court passes a death sentence on any of the defendants in the Dujail case, the law is clear, the sentence must be carried out within 30 days following the appeal," Mr Mussawi said. Execution uncertain in grenade murders.  Relatives of the two servicemen killed in Sergeant Hasan Akbar's grenade and rifle attack said yesterday [4/29/1005] that he deserved the death sentence given to him by a military jury.  But specialists in military law say it is hardly a certainty the execution will ever happen.  The military has not executed one of its own since 1961, while states have put scores of civilian killers to their deaths. Iraq hangs 27 on terrorism charges.  Iraqi authorities hanged 27 convicted "terrorists" today, an interior ministry spokesman announced.  "Twenty-seven terrorists were hanged today in Baghdad.  Most of them were Iraqis," said interior ministry spokesman Abdul Karim Khalaf.  He said they were convicted for attacks on Iraqi civilians and sentenced to death, in an execution order signed by an Iraqi vice president. The crime, not his race, put Baker on death row.  Another Maryland death row inmate is scheduled to take the lethal injection needle.  And, again, anti-death penalty activists have yanked out their ever-handy race card. The "Let Scott Peterson Live" Campaign at CBS.  As if we needed any more evidence of liberal media bias on the part of CBS, the senior political editor for CBS News, Dotty Lynch, has written a column arguing that convicted killer Scott Peterson should be allowed to live the rest of his life at taxpayer expense in a California prison because he may not really be guilty of murdering his wife and unborn son. Judge not.  Here they go again.  On March 1, the Supreme Court — by its now familiar 5–4 margin — issued a ruling that bans states from executing anyone who was younger than 18 at the time of his crime.  You may believe that this ruling gives teens a license to kill, or you may consider it to be a sensible protection for our innocent children.  Either opinion is defendable, and immaterial.  The important thing — and the frightening thing — about the ruling is that it continues the court's march toward a "living Constitution" and away from original intent. Those poor, poor perverts.  I can nearly, but not quite, understand why some people object to capital punishment. … What I can't begin to fathom are the people who seem to have the same tender feelings for sexual predators that the rest of us have for our pets.  Unfortunately, these aren't the same mushy-headed simpletons holding candlelight vigils outside San Quentin.  Instead, they're judges and legislators. Evolving Standards of Decency.  William Kristol sarcastically thanks the US Supreme Court for its recent decision saving the life of Christopher Simmons, the youthful sadist who murdered Shirley Crook for the fun of it in 1993.  In seven paragraphs of well-tempered fury, Kristol contrasts the judicial sensitivity to "evolving standards of decency" that spared Simmons from the death penalty because of his age with the absence of any such sensitivity when it came to Terri Schiavo. Scalia Slams Juvenile Death Penalty Ruling.  Justice Antonin Scalia criticized the Supreme Court's recent decision to strike down the juvenile death penalty, calling it the latest example of politics on the court that has made judicial nominations an increasingly bitter process. Judicial supremacists and the despotic branch.  Justice Antonin Scalia, a dependable constitutional constructionist, protested on behalf of the dissenters that capital punishment should, rightly in accordance with constitutional federalism, be determined by individual states. … "To invoke alien law when it agrees with one's own thinking, and ignore it otherwise, is not reasoned decision-making, but sophistry." Forgetting Facts While Making Law.  In our system of limited government, with its separation of powers, we depend upon our unelected lifetime-tenured judges to restrain themselves from implementing their own moral, social and political values when they are unsupported by a plain understanding of the Constitution and at odds with the choices we make through the democratic process. On the Supreme Court's definition of cruelty:  In this case, a majority of the court ruled that the execution of someone who was 17 at the time of the crime violates the 8th Amendment, which prohibits "cruel and unusual punishments."  It reached this conclusion just 16 years after deciding that the execution of a 17-year-old did not violate the 8th Amendment.  What changed was not the 8th Amendment, which reads exactly as it did then.  What changed, in the court's opinion, were the "evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society." U.S. Constitution:  Made in Jamaica?  In Roper v. Simmons, the Supreme Court reached out and gave America a good old-fashioned smack-upside-the-head when it abolished capital punishment for juvenile offenders. … The Court declared that the death penalty was now unconstitutional for minors due to a supposed "emerging national consensus" that the death penalty was wrong.  The last time we checked, the Supreme Court was supposed to use the Constitution as its guide.  If anyone's to take notice of an "emerging national consensus," it's the legislature. The new age Supreme Court.  In its 5-4 decision on March 1, the Court decreed that "Juveniles are less mature than adults and, no matter how heinous their crimes, they are not among 'the worst offenders' who deserve to die."  While I certainly respect that opinion, I strongly object to the United States Supreme Court presuming to impose it on our entire society as if it is the final arbiter not just of the law, but our moral standards. The Supreme Court's vexing elitism.  In my last column, I discussed the Supreme Court's abominable decision outlawing the death penalty for murderers under the age of 18.  I have a few more complaints.  First, much of the Court's analytical emphasis considers the plight of the offenders.  Conspicuously lost in the equation are concerns for the victims and society at large, for whom the Court demonstrates a stunning disregard.  The Editor's Opinion:   (1) I've never even seen the inside of a law school, but even I can tell you that the Tenth Amendment says this is an issue which should be decided by each of the 50 states for themselves, not by the Supreme Court.  (2) In the Jewish culture, a 13-year-old boy has a bar mitzvah ceremony, in which he declares, "Today, I am a Man," and is then considered an adult.  (3) If you are a drug dealer and a murderer and a recalcitrant felon, you should get the electric chair if you are at least 13 years of age. Debating the death penalty:  With conservative ideas sinking new roots across American culture, conservatives have new reason to test their own thinking. California to Execute Inmate in 1981 Slayings.  It would be the first execution in California since January 2002 and only the 11th since the state reinstated the death penalty in 1977.  More than 600 men are on the state's death row. … The last execution in California came on Jan. 29, 2002, when Stephen Wayne Anderson was put to death for shooting an 81-year-old woman in 1980. More innocents die when we don't have capital punishment:  Murderers who are not executed have murdered innocent people — usually fellow prisoners.  And the very real possibility of escape from prison means that murderers threaten far more innocent lives than capital punishment does. Vermont Has its First Capital Trial in 50 Years.  A man convicted of helping to fatally beat a grandmother as she prayed for her life was formally sentenced to death Friday [6/16/2006], Vermont's first death sentence in almost half a century. Executing "children," and other death-penalty myths:  The age issue is a red herring.  No state allows the death sentence for anyone younger than 16, and no one younger than 23 has been executed in modern times.  The truth is that capital punishment in America is the most accurate and carefully administered criminal sanction in the world, and the public has good reason to support it. Controversial Study Says Executions Save Lives:  Three economists at Emory University are stirring the pot with a new study that concludes an average of 18 lives are saved each time a criminal is executed. Murdering the bell curve:  After hearing the (overwhelming) evidence against him, a jury sentenced Atkins to death.  Last week, the Supreme Court overturned that sentence.  The court ruled that the Constitution makes Atkins ineligible for the death penalty if he can prove he is "retarded."  In other words, Atkins avoids his capital sentence if he is at least smart enough to know how to fail an IQ test. Accountable, Yet Not Accountable:  A "Retarded" Supreme Court Decision:  The Supreme court recently released its decision in Atkins v. Virginia, regarding the propriety of executing the mentally retarded. Retardation and capital punishment:  The Supreme Court, in its decision, said that persons deemed retarded -- with an IQ of 70 or less (why not 71?)-- and judged guilty of a capital crime, cannot be executed.  In so ruling, the court majority moved from the intention of the Founders, which was to make execution more humane, to focusing on the status of the guilty, which appears not to have entered the Founders' minds while crafting the Eighth Amendment. Execution of the mentally retarded:  What next for HB 236 opponents after Supreme Court's ruling? Deal keeps Penry imprisoned for life.  The long saga of convicted murderer Johnny Paul Penry, whose case helped push mental retardation into the national debate over capital punishment, ended Friday [2/15/2008] with a plea agreement to a life sentence.  Penry, one of Texas' best-known death row inmates, agreed to three life sentences and to a stipulation that he was not mentally retarded, in spite of what his lawyers have asserted for almost three decades. How would the court fare on an IQ test?  In Atkins vs. Virginia, handed down last week, the Unites States Supreme Court substituted the judgment of six justices for that of 20 state legislatures. Texas jurors send killer to his death 'because the Bible told them to'.  A Texas man is due to be executed next month despite admissions by jurors that they consulted biblical passages advocating death as a punishment to help to decide his fate. ... During the trial, the jurors were instructed by the judge not to refer to anything that was not presented as evidence in the courtroom. The Editor says... When the judge demands that they not "refer to anything", does that include the jurors' common sense, morality and individual experiences?  If the judge instructed the jurors to find the defendant not guilty, would they be so obligated?  I don't know about you, but I don't think I'd pay much attention to orders of that sort. Will the death penalty meet its maker?  (Numerous links to death penalty articles.) News and timely commentary about crime and punishment in general: Confession deal backfires and serial killer goes free.  Nolan Ray George, then in his mid-20s and working for the City of Pontiac, eventually confessed to three strangulations, two of them fatal, and went to prison for one.  Through plea deals with police and prosecutors, and fortuitous appellate court decisions, he served only 12 years in a Michigan prison.  Once released, he fatally strangled another woman in Ohio and was the prime suspect in a second strangulation.  He served only 10 years there. Revisiting Crime and Punishment.  [Scroll down slowly]  That our prison population has quadrupled over the last few decades is proof that some measure of the sanity on the issue of crime and punishment that had been lost during the heady days of the 1960's has been restored.  But the paradigm of "rehabilitation" that rose to dominance during that time has not lost its hegemony, for our prisoners are supplied access to a variety of goods that well exceed the necessaries of life and that have nothing at all to do with punishment. Sometimes Life in Prison Really Means Life.  The United States is now housing a large and permanent population of prisoners who will die of old age behind bars. RFID Compliance Monitoring as a Condition of Federal Supervised Release.  Some states have moved to chemically castrating certain types of sex offenders, while others have considered implementing lifetime GPS monitoring.  And, for the better part of two years, the chipping of convicted sex offenders has lingered in the minds of concerned citizens and government officials alike, mutually frustrated with the serious inadequacies of existing sex offender punishment and registration regimes. A Legal System Only a Mother Could Love.  Why ... do we go so far out of our way to protect criminals?  It's as if we're playing a game and all the rules are in their favor.  For instance, why should a cop making an arrest have to pause to read the perp his rights?  Why shouldn't jurors be made aware of the defendant's criminal history?  Why should a cop's honest mistake work to the felon's advantage?  One final question: When is a bloody axe not a murder weapon?  Easy answer:  When it's spotted in the back seat of a car that's been stopped because of a malfunctioning brake light, and not because the driver was suspected of whacking off his wife's head. Obama:  Tilting at Racial Windmills.  Simply put, black offenders do not receive stiffer penalties than white offenders for equivalent crimes — not today, and not at any time in recent decades.  The most exhaustive, best designed study of this matter — a three-year analysis of more than 11,000 convicted criminals in California — found that the severity of offenders' sentences depended heavily on such factors as prior criminal records, the seriousness of the crimes, and whether guns were used in the commission of those crimes.  Race was found to have no effect whatsoever. The Costs of Crime:  For more than two centuries, the political left has been preoccupied with the fate of criminals, often while ignoring or downplaying the fate of the victims of those criminals. … Britain has gone much further down the road that the New York Times is urging us to follow.  In the process, Britain has gone from being one of the most law-abiding nations on earth to overtaking the United States in most categories of crime. 1 in every 136 U.S. residents is behind bars.  Prisons and jails added more than 1,000 inmates each week for a year, putting almost 2.2 million people, or one in every 136 U.S. residents, behind bars by last summer. The Editor says... The article above, since it was written by an Associated Press writer, is apparently based on the liberal perspective that too many people are incarcerated in the U.S., and most of them don't deserve to be there, and they're only in jail because they're not white, etc.  Of course this is nonsense.  So many people are in jail because this country is full of criminals!  Many more have been or should be in prison. Releasing Inmates Early Has a Costly Human Toll.  A shortage of jail beds puts career criminals back on the streets, where they often commit new offenses. Skewed views of crime:  It does no good to point out that soaring crime rates in the United States began to turn down only after the declining rate of imprisonment was halted and reversed, leading to a rising prison population much deplored by liberals.  It does no good to point out Singapore's imprisonment rate is more than double that of Canada — and its crime rate less than one-tenth the Canadian crime rate. Crime and Rhetoric:  Having declined for decades on end, the murder rate suddenly doubled between 1961 and 1974.  The rate at which citizens became victims of violent crimes in general tripled.  Such trends began at different times in different countries but the patterns remained very similar.  As the rates of imprisonment declined, crime rates soared — whether in England, Australia, New Zealand, or the United States. New High In U.S. Prison Numbers.  More than one in 100 adults in the United States is in jail or prison, an all-time high that is costing state governments nearly $50 billion a year and the federal government $5 billion more, according to a report released yesterday [2/28/2008]. The Editor says... That's money well spent.  As long as there is plenty of extra prison space, criminals will think twice about the consequences of their actions. 'Laxachusetts':  Where criminals get coddled.  Does it come as a surprise to anyone that Leeland Eisenberg — the disturbed man who allegedly strapped road flares to his chest and took five people hostage at Hillary Clinton's campaign headquarters Friday [11/30/2007] in New Hampshire — is a convicted rapist released from a Massachusetts prison? Headbutting Police Dogs – A 'PC' Step Too Far.  You really couldn't make it up... a Welsh police force is training its dogs to headbutt criminals rather than bite them, because politically correct – 'PC' – bosses are afraid that allowing the dogs to bite criminals will infringe their human rights! When good people fight back:  A guy came in with a knife, a threat and a demand for money. … But this time someone fought back.  Someone who didn't get the memo or pay attention in the training class.  Someone up on the mezzanine saw the guy and the knife — and saw a chair, up on the mezzanine.  A big chair.  And this somebody picked up the chair and heaved it down.  It clocked the wannabe robber and knocked him down.  He stood up, demonstrated that he knew several ways to use the f-word, and ran out the door with his tail between his legs. A Land Fit for Criminals, Part I.  The general mindset of the political left is similar from country to country and even from century to century.  The softness toward dangerous criminals found in such 18th century writers as William Godwin and Condorcet has its echo today among those who hold protest vigils at the executions of murderers and who complain that we are not being nice enough to the cutthroats imprisoned at Guantanamo. A Land Fit for Criminals, Part II.  Where the dominance of the left is greatest — in the media and in academia, for example — facts to the contrary are seldom heard.  The futility of imprisonment, for example, is a dogma on the left. … It does no good to point out that Singapore's imprisonment rate is more than double that of Canada — and its crime rate less than one-tenth the Canadian crime rate. In Canada... Criminals have all the rights.  Researching a column last week … I came across a revealing government document. … You only have to read a few pages to realize how, over the decades, our ruling class' obsession with the "rights" of criminals has reduced their victims to afterthoughts.  Not only have we scrapped capital punishment, gutted the meaning of "life" imprisonment and allowed violent criminals to apply for unescorted day passes from prison after serving one-sixth of their sentence and full parole after one-third.  Today, the very language of government when it speaks of prisoners' rights is reverential. Inmates asking court to decide if nutraloaf is meal or punishment.  When shooting suspect Christopher Williams acted up in prison, he was given nutraloaf — a mixture of cubed whole wheat bread, nondairy cheese, raw carrots, spinach, seedless raisins, beans, vegetable oil, tomato paste, powdered milk and dehydrated potato flakes.  Prison officials call it a complete meal.  Inmates say it's so awful they'd rather go hungry. Prison blues:  States slimming down inmate meals.  The recession is hitting home for inmates, too:  Some cash-strapped states are taking aim at prison menus.  Georgia prisoners already didn't get lunch on the weekends, and the Department of Corrections recently eliminated the midday meal on Fridays, too.  Ohio may drop weekend breakfasts and offer brunch instead.  Other states are cutting back on milk and fresh fruit. Alabama sheriffs feed inmates on $1.75 a day.  Back in the day of chain gangs, Alabama passed a law that gave sheriffs $1.75 a day to feed each prisoner in their jails, and the sheriffs got to pocket anything that was left over.  More than 80 years later, most Alabama counties still operate under this system, with the same $1.75-a-day allowance, and some sheriffs are actually making money on top of their salaries. Prison Staff Forced to Address Every Inmate as 'Mister'.  A British prison is forcing its staff to prove they treat inmates decently as part of the Prison Service's national "decency agenda," which includes addressing all inmates, including sex offenders and violent criminals, as "Mr.," the Telegraph reported Wednesday [10/1/2008]. Notes on Michigan criminal procedure:  Michigan sentences may not exceed two-thirds of the maximum.  A crime that is on the books as 12 years, for example, means a maximum sentence of 8-12 years with eight years being the effective maximum.  How much of that will be served?  The judges say that defendants usually get out after serving about 80 percent of the minimum.  In this case, that would be a little less than six and a half years.  Much of that time would not be served in prison, but in halfway houses. Do the time, lower the crime.  In the last 10 years, the effect of prison on crime rates has been studied by many scholars.  The Pew report doesn't mention any of them. … A high risk of punishment reduces crime.  Deterrence works.  But so does putting people in prison.  The typical criminal commits from 12 to 16 crimes a year (not counting drug offenses).  Locking him up spares society those crimes.  Several scholars have separately estimated that the increase in the size of our prison population has driven down crime rates by 25%. Who freed the cop-killers?  The only thing that would've prevented this homicide was the one thing politicians, judges, prison officials in Philadelphia don't want to address.  Warner, Cain and Floyd should have been behind bars at the time they were committing the robbery. He's been held in 44 offenses — and he's 17.  Since age 10, Travis Hylton has been in and out of the Pima County juvenile court system, having been arrested on 44 criminal offenses in seven years.  All but six of those charges have been dismissed based on the fact that doctors deemed Hylton — now 17 — incompetent to stand trial and unable to assist in his defense.  Now Hylton sits in jail on three counts of attempted murder. States May Free Inmates to Save Millions.  Lawmakers from California to Kentucky are trying to save money with a drastic and potentially dangerous budget-cutting proposal:  releasing tens of thousands of convicts from prison, including drug addicts, thieves and even violent criminals. More Prisoners, Less Crime.  Last July, Obama said that "more young black men languish in prison than attend colleges and universities."  Actually, there are more than twice as many black men ages 18 to 24 in college as there are in jail.  Last September he said, "We have a system that locks away too many young, first-time, nonviolent offenders for the better part of their lives."  But Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute, writing in the institute's City Journal, notes that from 1999 to 2004, violent offenders accounted for all of the increase in the prison population. When dealing with punks, there's no time to be a liberal.  In my humble opinion — shared with all those with some elementary understanding of the art of policing — the leading cause of anti-social behaviour is permission.  People, and young punks especially, will do things that even they know are malicious because no one will stop them.  The worst possible conditions exist, as today, when the surrounding society is befogged with idiotic, decadent notions, such as the idea that the punks are themselves "victims" of some material deprivation, when what they have in fact been deprived of is the iron fist of the law. Idiot Compassion:  Idiot compassion invents Miranda rights to protect criminals from prosecution rather than allowing police powers to protect innocent citizens. ... Idiot compassion is so fearful that one innocent man might be imprisoned that it helps enact laws that insure freedom to thousands of certainly guilty ones, by disallowing evidence obtained against them. Shocking crimes of the 65 killers released under Labour to strike again.  Murderers freed from life sentences under Labour have committed a string of rapes and killings.  Ministers last night admitted the full scale of reoffending by so-called lifers.  After their release, the 65 killers committed at least three further murders, one attempted murder and three rapes.  They were also responsible for crimes such as a paedophile attack, two woundings causing grievous bodily harm and three offences of kidnapping, false imprisonment or abduction. Judges tentatively order California inmates released.  A special panel of federal judges tentatively ruled Monday that California must release tens of thousands of inmates to relieve overcrowding.  The judges said no other solution will improve conditions so poor that inmates die regularly of suicides or lack of proper care.  The panel said it wanted the state to present a plan to trim the population in two to three years. The Editor says... Yes, prisons are unpleasant.  That's why the threat of imprisonment is a deterrent.  Here's a sure way to relieve overcrowding:  Build more prisons. Bailiff's mistake leads to mistrial in Harris murder.  The Harris County jury returned a guilty verdict after deliberating 45 minutes in a murder case, but the judge realized he had a real problem.  Sitting in the jury box were 13 citizens.  Instead of sentencing Charles Mapps to prison in the shooting death of his girlfriend, state District Judge Mark Kent Ellis on Tuesday declared a mistrial. D.C.'s money-saving plan:  Free inmates.  Mayor Adrian M. Fenty wants to help balance the District's recession-squeezed budget by allowing as many as 80 percent of the city's inmates to qualify for early release, borrowing a tactic that has stirred controversy elsewhere in the nation.  The city hopes to save $4.4 million in fiscal 2010 under the plan, which would reduce the prison population by 2 percent from its current daily average of 3,000 inmates. The Editor says... Hmmm... two percent of 3,000 inmates.  That's only 60 inmates set free, and yet it will save $4.4 million, which means that it costs over $73,000 per year to keep each inmate locked up. One in 25 adult Ohioans is in prison, in jail, on parole or on probation, study finds.  One in every 25 adult Ohioans is in prison, jail or on parole or probation, a study by the Pew Center on the States shows.  While the national average is one in 31 U.S. adults, the numbers are more dramatic for Hispanics (one in 27), men (one in 18), and blacks (one in 11), according to One in 31:  The Long Reach of American Corrections, released today.  Ohio's one-in-25 rate was sixth among the states.  Georgia had the highest at one in 13, and New Hampshire the lowest at one in 88. The Editor says... If the people in prison are genuinely guilty of violent crimes, and they've all had fair trials and adequate legal representation, then statistics like those above are not alarming at all.  On the contrary, it should be very reassuring to know that dangerous criminals are locked up! Remember the Golden Oldies, Dr. Emanuel.  How humane, how civilized, liberal values have made America.  We've gotten rid of the death penalty, and all other cruel and unusual punishments.  So Charles Manson — murderer of nine people — and hundreds of other murderers can live out their lives in relative comfort, not having to worry about where their next meal is coming from, or freezing in the winter, or having to do hard labor, or miss their weight-lifting routines or basketball games. Getting away with murder is the norm in Detroit.  At least 7 in 10 people who committed murder in this city last year have gotten away with it.  The most generous interpretation of 2008 homicide warrants and convictions supplied by local law enforcement officials shows that in more than 70 percent of homicide cases no suspect has been identified, arrested, charged or convicted of a killing. APF and Hardin Constitution Violations.  A Livingston state representative is questioning whether Hardin officials and American Police Force have violated the Montana constitution.  Representative Robert Ebinger says he became aware of the situation after Cascade and Park County law enforcement officials came to him asking questions about APF. ... "No armed person or persons or body of men shall be brought into the state for the presentation of the peace or the suppression of domestic violence unless the application of the legislature or of the governor when the legislature cannot be convened," said Ebinger while reading the constitution word for word. California jail entrepreneur has checkered past.  Michael Hilton showed up in Hardin, Mont., last week, presenting himself as an economic savior, the man who would take over the town's $27 million jail — empty since it was built as a development project in 2007 — and provide 200 new jobs in the process.  He wore a military style uniform, and as a gesture to local law enforcement offered up the use of three Mercedes SUVs. Leftwing Pseudo-science Threatens Freedom.  America's Constitution is based on the Enlightenment view that Man has volition and Reason.  Because of this, he is perfectible and can determine how to live his own life.  He therefore has no need of a government's telling him what to do.  Because we choose our own actions, we are responsible for them.  In being responsible for them, we necessarily become deserving of rewards or punishments according to whether our actions victimize others. At least someone in prison can't rob you.  Yesterday [10/6/2009], the Prison Governors' Association voted to abolish all prison sentences of under 12 months.  Short sentences, they believe, don't work and cost too much. ... [But] when criminals are in jail, they can't break into your house or attack people in the street. Seattle's teenage Jesse James.  Victims call him a one-man crime wave who ought to be in prison.  Fans say he's a misunderstood folk hero in the grand tradition of Robin Hood, Huckleberry Finn, and Jesse James.  To police near Seattle, who are once more on his elusive tail, Colton Harris-Moore can be summed up in two words:  most wanted. Leftwing Pseudo-science Threatens Freedom.  If the reader is ever accepted for jury duty, do not believe doctors' "genetic" or "mental illness" excuses.  Those are designed to make you disregard the defendant's responsibleness.  Those charlatans will hide behind the prestige of science.  Human conduct is not their legitimate field, for that is the field of volition, Reason and ethics. Inmate released early is arrested in rape attempt.  One of the inmates the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department released early as part of an effort to reduce the state's prison population was arrested Tuesday [2/2/2010] on suspicion of attempted rape, less than 24 hours after getting out of jail, The Bee has learned. Confessed child murderer spends days in downtown Lauderdale park.  Gary Kerpan confessed years ago to snatching a 12-year-old girl, raping her, stabbing her and killing her.  Now that he's out of prison, he hangs out in Fort Lauderdale's Stranahan Park.  He is one of Fort Lauderdale's homeless. Muslims Exempt from Death Penalty in U.S.?  Last October there was another in the growing number of Islamic honor killings in the United States when a Muslim in Peoria, Arizona, Faleh Almaleki, got into his Jeep Cherokee and ran down his twenty-year-old daughter Noor, as well as her boyfriend's mother, Amal Khalaf.  Noor died not long thereafter, and Faleh Almaleki was charged with first-degree murder, aggravated assault and two counts of leaving the scene of a serious accident.  But prosecutors announced this week that he will not face the death penalty — it wouldn't be multicultural. California prison case goes to Supreme Court.  Agreeing to hear an appeal from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the U.S. Supreme Court said Monday [6/14/2010] it will decide whether the state can be forced to release 46,000 inmates — more than one-fourth of its prison population — to relieve overcrowding.  The justices said they would hear the case in the fall and rule early next year. Change Club Med Environment at Club Fed.  Unleashing criminals from American jails onto American streets is determinately criminal.  But still, the debate on American incarceration continues to flare up due to tough economic times and because our country spends roughly $50 billion annually to incarcerate public nuisances and dangerous thugs.  Shockingly, the annual cost per prisoner in California is $50,000.  No wonder there has been a violent push for the privatization of prisons and the revamping of the American legal system. Back to the Home page

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