Dennis Prager: The death penalty, a defense.

[Josh Oakley]

Thats not true there has never been a person convicted and put to death that was later found not to have been guily since the Death penality was reinstated.

Okay, let's re-examine your claim. You mean by the court, by police investigators, or in general? On the first premise you would be absolutely right. On the second two, you would be wrong.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

And All of the examples you posted have been studied by every overzealous law studient looking to make a name for themselves and the Innocence Project 100's of times over last 10 years and still nobody has ever found evidence them not guilty.

How do you reexamine a case when the evidence was destroyed after the execution?

 

[ballen0351]

How do you reexamine a case when the evidence was destroyed after the execution?

These cases have been studied OVER and OVER court transcripts, interviews, ect. They have been studied to death and the conclusion has always been the same. We "think" he was innocent but there is no proof. You cant try to twist and turn anyway you want the fact are the facts. Ive personally studied this topic in depth for several college classes I have taken and written detailed reports and findings. Ive studied and went thru actual trial transcripts not just what some anti-death penality reporter published. Just in the Jones case alone you said there was NO evidence other then the hair. Thats just not true. They found evidence of not only the robbery that resulted in the Murder but 2 other robberies including a bank robbery Jones and his same to co-defendants did and took the money and went to Vegas and lived it up AFTER killing the store clerk in cold blood. Thats was AFTER Jones was given a Life Sentence for a Murder he committed while in jail for a prior bank robbery. Jones is almost always the case thats brought up when they talk about an innocent man and the death penality and hes is about as far from innocent as you can get.
I respect your opinion and I agree 1 innocent man put to death is 1 too many. As stated I would like to see all death row cases that are currently in the system to all be re-examinded using todays science and if there is not conclusive DNA or video evidence then it be changed to life without parole. I also would like all future case held to same standards

 

[billc]

So 15,000 people out of 300 million and you agree that there are people who won't commit murder because of the consequences. There are people who do avoid parking tickets and those who don't. As far as making us safer...hmmmm...how about this...

http://www.aim.org/media-monitor/killers-who-kill-again/

The other side of the story is that criminals who stay alive in prison can murder again. Consider the case of Donna A. Payant, who was an officer in the New York State Department of Corrections when she was strangled, beaten, bitten and killed by an inmate in 1981. The killer was sentenced to death but this was overturned and changed to life in prison. The inmate, Lemuel Smith, was working for the prison chaplain when the incident occurred. He had been an alter server.
Smith had held up a religious store in 1976 and had murdered the owner of the store and an employee. The next year, Smith kidnapped a New York woman and robbed and murdered her. When he was finally apprehended, he was tried and convicted on two counts of murder, robbery, and kidnapping. He was sentenced by the court to serve three terms of 25 years to life in prison. If Smith had been executed after his first conviction of murder, Donna Payant would not have been murdered. Obviously, the death penalty would have been a deterrent in this case at least.

If Smith had been executed after his first conviction of murder, Donna Payant would not have been murdered. Obviously, the death penalty would have been a deterrent in this case at least.

Also from wikipedia linked from Jeffery Dahmer:

Christopher J. Scarver (born July 6, 1969)[SUP][1][/SUP] is an American convicted murderer who, while in prison, murdered notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and convicted murderer Jesse Anderson. He described the killings as "the work of God".

Does anyone here doubt the guilt of Jeffery Dahmer, John Wayne Gacey or Ted bundy or that bundy and gacey deserved the death penalty?


The murder of other prisoners and guards by convicted murderers serving life sentences and less is a reason for the death penalty, not to mention when prisoners, convicted of murder, escape and kill again.

 

[billc]

Elder, pragers is talking about the argument in general at that point and not specifically the gov.

This has become one of the most frequently offered reasons for objecting to capital punishment -- that because the system is not equitable, no murderer should be put to death.
This is a reason that is devoid of reason. If a system is not equitable, you don't end the system, you try to end what is not equitable

 

[elder999]

A condemned inmate who was scheduled to be executed next month is now slamming Gov. John Kitzhaber for giving him a reprieve, saying the governor didn't have the guts to carry out the execution. Two-time murderer Gary Haugen had voluntarily given up his legal challenges, saying he wants to be executed in protest of a criminal justice system he views as broken. But Kitzhaber on Tuesday said he won't allow anyone to be executed while he is in office, calling Oregon's death penalty scheme "compromised and inequitable."

[/quote]

 

[elder999]

So 15,000 people out of 300 million and you agree that there are people who won't commit murder because of the consequences. There are people who do avoid parking tickets and those who don't.

THat's not at all what I said. What I said was that it might deter people from murder.

I can only speak for myself-and I won't.

I also think that the argument isn't devoid of reason-there is no "general argument" as you put it-it's the governor's personal position.

Sort of like this guy:

condemned inmate who was scheduled to be executed next month is now slamming Gov. John Kitzhaber for giving him a reprieve, saying the governor didn't have the guts to carry out the execution. Two-time murderer Gary Haugen had voluntarily given up his legal challenges, saying he wants to be executed in protest of a criminal justice system he views as broken. But Kitzhaber on Tuesday said he won't allow anyone to be executed while he is in office, calling Oregon's death penalty scheme "compromised and inequitable."

See, I don't think the death penalty is much of a punishment, let alone a deterrent-I'd rather die than face a life of unstimulated solitary confinement, like those poor bastards at Supermax.

 

[billc]

Hmmm...a lot of killers fight a long time to

"face a life of unstimulated solitary confinement"

and use every legal trick in the book to hold that day off for as long as possible, and then go on to kill guards, other inmates, or people on the outside when they manage to escape.

Yeah, that guy you mentioned is like the guy who is held back by his friends in the bar fight and on the car ride home says he would have cleaned the other guys clock if only his buddies had let him. You also have to wonder when the guy found out the gov. wasn't going to execute him, before or after the decision to stop fighting the execution. It would be interesting to see what would happen if the gov. changed his mind? I wonder if that con would change his mind as well.

 

[elder999]

Hmmm...a lot of killers fight a long time to and use every legal trick in the book to hold that day off for as long as possible, and then go on to kill guards, other inmates, or people on the outside when they manage to escape.

As you'd say: hmmmm?

And I'd say: Name two.

Yeah, that guy you mentioned is like the guy who is held back by his friends in the bar fight and on the car ride home says he would have cleaned the other guys clock if only his buddies had let him. You also have to wonder when the guy found out the gov. wasn't going to execute him, before or after the decision to stop fighting the execution. It would be interesting to see what would happen if the gov. changed his mind? I wonder if that con would change his mind as well.

Kind of like Gary Gilmore? You remember him.

Oh, that's right-around the time you were born, wasn't it?

"Let's do it." - almost last words of Gary Gilmore, facing his (requested) firing squad

 

[billc]

Two killers who fought the death penalty sentence and sought

""face a life of unstimulated solitary confinement"

:

John Wayne Gacey
Ted Bundy

I believe the guilt of these two murderers is beyond doubt.

To show this isn't just an American problem:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1540632/Convicted-murderers-who-were-set-free-to-kill.html

Nearly 30 convicted killers released from jail over the past 10 years have gone on to kill again, according to Home Office figures released yesterday.
Twenty-five of them were convicted in courts for the second homicide — including 21 murders. A further four suspects in second homicide cases who had previous convictions died or committed suicide before they could be brought to justice.

The figures, from 1995 to last year, include seven double murderers, suggesting that all or most of the seven claimed a second victim while on licence after being freed from a mandatory life sentence for the previous murder. An eighth convicted murderer went on to commit manslaughter.

The disclosure that murderers are being freed to kill again, despite a regime of supposed tight monitoring by probation, will come as a further embarrassment to John Reid, the Home Secretary, at a time of controversy over the potential release of prisoners to ease the jails crisis.

A total of 14 people committed manslaughter first and then were subsequently found guilty of murder. Three previously jailed for manslaughter committed a second manslaughter.











The figures reveal that three people were "serving a custodial sentence" when they were convicted of the second homicide offence — believed to refer to prison killings. It is unclear what type of homicide the prison killings were, or whether they included any of the previously convicted murderers.

Here are some more:

http://www.lowellpl.lib.in.us/convicts.htm

• John Woolard, 37, and Roy R. Harper, 42, both have long records of criminal
  activity and incarceration, and both were unlikely to ever see the outside of
  prison walls unless they escaped.

• Woolard had been serving two life sentences plus five years for murder and
  kidnapping at the time of his May 28 escape, while Harper was serving two
  consecutive 44-year sentences for armed robbery with no chance of parole. Both
  men were reportedly also wanted in other states had they ever been considered
  for release from their Parchman, Mississippi cells.

• Woolard's incarceration in Mississippi followed his earlier escape from a
  Florida prison. It was during that escape that he shot and killed a park ranger
  and took another person hostage, earning him the double life sentence.

• " We knew these guys had 'survivalist' knowledge and could still be in the
  area," said an Indiana State Police officer. "They didn't plan to be taken
  alive."

• After their escape in late May, having used a cutting tool of some kind to
  remove a plate in the wall of their cells and sneaking past a guard tower and
  cutting their way through a double stretch of razor-tipped chain-link fence, the
  duo disappeared into a Mississippi Delta pecan orchard. They had a 12-hour head
  start on authorities, who did not discover they had bunched their bed linens to
  make it appear they were sleeping until about 1 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon.

• That same day, they allegedly broke into a Webb, Mississippi, home and
  surprised an elderly couple, Robert and Lanelle Abbey, who were returning home
  from church. They tied up the couple, who were found dehydrated on the floor by
  a delivery person two days later, and escaped with 11 firearms, ammunition,
  about $100 and the couple's Chevrolet Caprice.

And I repeat this bit for emphasis:

Woolard's incarceration in Mississippi followed his earlier escape from a
Florida prison. It was during that escape that he shot and killed a park ranger
and took another person hostage, earning him the double life sentence.

And a famous local murderer: Richard Speck from wikipedia

Richard Franklin Speck (December 6, 1941 – December 5, 1991) was a mass murderer who systematically tortured, raped and murdered eight student nurses from South Chicago Community Hospital in Chicago, Illinois on July 14, 1966

As to his life of

"unstimulated solitary confinement[/QUOTE

Life in prisonWhile incarcerated at the Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Illinois, Speck was given the nickname "birdman", after the film Birdman of Alcatraz, because he kept a pair of sparrows that had flown into his cell. He was described as a loner who kept a stamp collection and listened to music, and whose work within the prison involved bars and walls. His contacts with the warden included requests for new shirts or a radio or other mundane items. The warden merely described him as "a big nothing doing time." Speck was not a model prisoner; he was often caught with drugs or distilled moonshine. Punishment for such infractions never stopped him. "How am I going to get in trouble? I'm here for 1,200 years!"[SUP][10][/SUP]
Speck customarily refused all media requests, but granted one prison interview to Bob Greene in 1978; Speck told Greene that he read Greene's column in the Chicago Tribune. In this interview, Speck confessed to the murders for the first time publicly and said he thought he would get out of prison "between now and the year 2000," at which time he hoped to run his own grocery store business.[SUP][10][/SUP] He told Greene that one of his pleasures in prison was "getting high."[SUP][10][/SUP] When Greene asked him if he compared himself to celebrity killers like John Dillinger, Speck replied, "Me, I'm not like Dillinger or anybody else. I'm freakish."[SUP][10][/SUP]
Speck said that when he killed the nurses he "had no feelings," but things had changed: "I had no feelings at all that night. They said there was blood all over the place. I can't remember. It felt like nothing... I'm sorry as hell. For those girls, and for their families, and for me. If I had to do it over again, it would be a simple house burglary."[SUP][10][/SUP]
Speck's "final thought for the American people" was: "Just tell 'em to keep up their hatred for me. I know it keeps up their morale. And I don't know what I'd do without it."[SUP][10][/SUP]
[h=3][edit] Prison video[/h]In May 1996, Chicago television news anchor Bill Kurtis received video tapes from an anonymous attorney that had been made at Stateville Prison in 1988. Showing them publicly for the first time before a shocked and deeply angry Illinois state legislature, Kurtis pointed out the explicit scenes of sex, drug use, and money being passed around by prisoners, who seemingly had no fear of being caught; in the center of it all was Speck, performing oral sex on another inmate,[SUP][39][/SUP][SUP][40][/SUP] sharing a huge pile of cocaine with an inmate, parading in silk panties, sporting female-like breasts (allegedly grown using smuggled hormone treatments), and boasting, "If they only knew how much fun I was having, they'd turn me loose."[SUP][39][/SUP] The Illinois legislature packed the auditorium to view the two-hour video,[SUP][39][/SUP] but stopped the screening when the film showed Speck performing oral sex on another man.[SUP][40][/SUP]
From behind the camera, a prisoner asked Speck why he killed the nurses. Speck shrugged and jokingly said "It just wasn't their night." Asked how he felt about himself in the years since, he said "Like I always felt ... had no feeling. If you're asking me if I felt sorry, no." He also described in detail the experience of strangling someone: "It's not like TV...it takes over three minutes and you have to have a lot of strength."[SUP][39][/SUP] John Schmale, the brother of one of the murdered student nurses, said, "It was a very painful experience watching him tell about how he killed my sister." [SUP][41][/SUP]
Portions of the tapes were later broadcast on the A&E Network's Investigative Reports. The same airing of Investigative Reports included interviews with people who believed that Speck was not taking hormones, wearing panties, etc. voluntarily, and that he'd instead been forced to by other inmates — that this may have been his way of surviving his time in prison.

 

[billc]

From wikipedia on john wayne gacey and his desire to avoid execution:

John Gacy spent much of his time on death row studying books on law and filing numerous, exhaustive appeals and motions, none of which were successful. Gacy contended that he only had "some knowledge" of five of the murders: those of McCoy, Butkovitch, Godzik, Szyc and Piest[SUP][139][/SUP] and contended the remaining 28 murders had been committed by employees who were in possession of keys to his house while he was away on business trips

ted bundy and his desire to live:

He withheld many details, hoping to parlay the incomplete information into yet another stay of execution. "There are other buried remains in Colorado," he admitted, but refused to elaborate.[SUP][235][/SUP] The new strategy—immediately dubbed "Ted's bones-for-time scheme"—served only to deepen the resolve of authorities to see Bundy executed on schedule, and yielded little new detailed information.[SUP][236][/SUP] In cases where he did give details, nothing was found.[SUP][237][/SUP] Colorado detective Matt Lindvall interpreted this as a conflict between his desire to postpone his execution by divulging information and his need to remain in "total possession—the only person who knew his victims' true resting places."[SUP][238][/SUP]

That would be at least two Elder, and there are many more. Also remember that ted bundy escaped from custody several times, during one escape:

Sometime during the evening of January 14 or the early hours of January 15, 1978—one week after his arrival in Tallahassee—Bundy entered FSU's Chi Omega sorority house through a rear door with a faulty lock.[SUP][168][/SUP] Beginning at about 2:45am he bludgeoned Margaret Bowman, 21, with a piece of oak firewood as she slept, then garroted her with a nylon stocking.[SUP][169][/SUP] He then entered the bedroom of 20-year-old Lisa Levy and beat her unconscious, strangled her, tore one of her nipples, bit deeply into her left buttock, and sexually assaulted her with a hair mist bottle.[SUP][170][/SUP] In an adjoining bedroom he attacked Kathy Kleiner, who suffered a broken jaw and deep shoulder lacerations; and Karen Chandler, who suffered a concussion, broken jaw, loss of teeth, and a crushed finger.[SUP][171][/SUP] Tallahassee detectives later determined that all four attacks took place in less than 15 minutes, within earshot of more than 30 witnesses who heard nothing.[SUP][168][/SUP] After leaving the sorority house Bundy broke into an apartment building eight blocks away and attacked FSU student Cheryl Thomas, dislocating her shoulder and fracturing her jaw and skull in five places. She was left with permanent deafness and equilibrium damage that ended her dance career.[SUP][172][/SUP] On Thomas's bed police found a semen stain and a panty-hose "mask" containing two hairs "similar to Bundy's in class and characteristic".[SUP][173][/SUP][SUP][174][/SUP]

Soo...let's say ted bundy recieved life in prison, if you read his wikipedia page he escaped from captivity at least twice, and committed those gruesome murders during one period after having escaped. Sooo...if he managed to escape from prison, do you think that he wouldn't kill, and kill over and over until he was recaptured?

 

[billc]

Here is Bundy's wikipedia page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_bundy

On the escape that happened before the brutal killings listed in the previous post:

Bundy piled books and files in his bunk bed under a blanket to simulate his sleeping body and slipped into the crawlspace. He broke through the ceiling into the apartment of the chief guard—who was out for the evening with his wife[SUP][161][/SUP]—changed into street clothes from the guard's closet, and walked out the front door to freedom.[SUP][162][/SUP]

 

[elder999]

From wikipedia on john wayne gacey and his desire to avoid execution:



ted bundy and his desire to live:



That would be at least two Elder, and there are many more. Also remember that ted bundy escaped from custody several times, during one escape:



Soo...let's say ted bundy recieved life in prison, if you read his wikipedia page he escaped from captivity at least twice, and committed those gruesome murders during one period after having escaped. Sooo...if he managed to escape from prison, do you think that he wouldn't kill, and kill over and over until he was recaptured?

All of this misses the point. Bundy and Gacy were not deterred by the death penalty-they went on killing and killing-they really had no choice, and the narcissism inherent in their pathologies compelled them to try to stay alive, and to deflect blame. Bundy had only been convicted of kidnapping and charged with murder at the time of his first escape, and he was recaptured after six days-he probably would have beaten the rap on the murder he was standing trial for, but escaped again. Of course he killed more.

There is no escape from Supermax, though-and all of this is superfluous. Using people like Gacy and Bundy to justify the death penalty is pointless: when I was a kid, if someone was misbehaving on the playground, they got removed from the sandbox. If murderers can't play nicely with the other children, and we choose to remove them from the sandbox, I don't really have an issue with that, personally. The governor of Oregon may or may not have an issue with that.What he does seem to have an issue with, along with the various problems he finds in the system, is the possibility that he would have to live with the possibility of ordering the execution of an innocent person-and he doesn't have to, another problem inherent in the system, that he can do so.

You'll note that I didn't bother rebutting Prager's whole "justice" argument-while I don't agree with it entirely, and really do think death is preferable to the kind of life sentence I'e described, again, I'm okay with the idea of "removing bad kids from the sandbox." The deterrent argument, and the idea that the governor's personal decision is based on "liberalism," (I don't know that I'd be comfortable with that decision, and I'm no liberal) are idiotic, as I've said.

 

[ballen0351]

There is no escape from Supermax,

They said that about Alcatraz too.:bangahead:

 

[billc]

Keep in mind as well, jeffery dahmer and the other guy were killed by a convicted murderer in prison, and the other female guard was killed by a convicted murderer,in prison. Letting these people who cannot control their need to kill live is wrong. At a minimum, you endanger the lives of the guards, other inmates and other prison administrators and workers, especially if there is a riot. Also, if they escape, they can and do kill. As you point out, killing was an impulse to bundy, even on the run from the police he stopped and took time and the risks to murder all of those girls. You are gambling that a proven escape artist can't get out of a prison, ever, and that he wouldn't have the opportunity to kill a guard or another inmate, especially after years of confinement where he has nothing to do but plan and think about how to kill guards or prison personel. I would rather a known, without doubt murderer, is put to death, and save the lives of victims we don't even know yet. You may want to take a chance with that individuals life, I wouldn't.

 

[elder999]

Keep in mind as well, jeffery dahmer and the other guy were killed by a convicted murderer in prison, and the other female guard was killed by a convicted murderer,in prison. Letting these people who cannot control their need to kill live is wrong. At a minimum, you endanger the lives of the guards, other inmates and other prison administrators and workers, especially if there is a riot. Also, if they escape, they can and do kill. As you point out, killing was an impulse to bundy, even on the run from the police he stopped and took time and the risks to murder all of those girls. You are gambling that a proven escape artist can't get out of a prison, ever, and that he wouldn't have the opportunity to kill a guard or another inmate, especially after years of confinement where he has nothing to do but plan and think about how to kill guards or prison personel. I would rather a known, without doubt murderer, is put to death, and save the lives of victims we don't even know yet. You may want to take a chance with that individuals life, I wouldn't.

You might have a point, but not one that invalidates my argument that life imprisonment is a punishment worse than death.

 

[billc]

I agree with you there Elder. For a normal person such as myself, and I will also include you in that definition, no need to thank me, as innocent people, that existence would be a nightmare. For the deranged murderers they manage to create lives in the prison. Look at my post on richard speck, since he was locked up near here we had several nights of the prison video on the nightly news and it created a real stink fest down in the state capital. As you know, human beings can adapt to really horrible living conditions as part of the survival mechanism. speck, and gacey show that.

 

[elder999]

I agree with you there Elder. For a normal person such as myself, and I will also include you in that definition, no need to thank me, as innocent people, that existence would be a nightmare.

There's absolutely nothing "normal" about me-thank you. :lfao:

Except maybe that I like women and pie..... :lfao:

 

[billc]

At the same time? Or is there before and after relationship?

 

[elder999]

At the same time? Or is there before and after relationship?

Oh, billi-it's not an "either or" situation at all:

I like women.

I like pie.

I like women and pie. :lfao: