Posted on 07/03/2010 2:29:52 AM PDT by Scanian
Eight people were shot -- two fatally -- in four separate incidents in Brooklyn Wednesday night.
Last month, 26 people were shot, three fatally, over the course of one weekend in Chicago -- grisly, but a marked improvement over the Windy City's previous weekend, when more than 50 were shot, with eight dying.
An argument for tougher gun control?
But New York City and Chicago already have some of the most stringent gun-control laws in America -- to no apparent good effect.
So perhaps the real issue is a fundamental cultural disrepect for the value of human life -- and not just on the street.
Especially not just on the street.
Take Wednesday's absurd decision by a three-judge federal panel that rescued a notorious Staten Island cop-killer from an exceedingly rare -- but well-deserved -- death sentence.
The 2-1 decision by the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals was based on but a few words of a lengthy prosecutor's summation during the penalty phase of Ronell Wilson's trial, after he was convicted of murdering undercover cops James Nemorin and Rodney Andrews in 2003.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Liberal enclaves such as Chicago and NYC deserve exactly what they are getting.
By embracing the liberal ideology, the welfare state and preferring to impose laws against the law abiding instead of going after the criminals who, by their very definition do not obey the law.
They are now reaping what they have sown all these years.
I say screw them.
If NYC and Chicago want to keep electing ultra liberals, fine.
But don’t come crying to us when your beloved cities turn into something akin to Mogadishu
So what does this mean. This article seems as guilty as any leftist rag at zooming in on a little point and generalizing it to the big picture without showing the context. I would have expected a better explanation.
Insisting that their citizens not be able to defend themselves is the single most RACIST thing a big city Mayor can do, along with insisting that there be no school vouchers for minority children living in their cities.
Following the USSC decision on the second amendment Al Sharpton, shockingly, made a statement that he was in agreement with their ruling.
Needless to say, Sharpton’s statement got NO attention from the msm. Clearly he had read Clarence Thomas’s opinion or heard it read by Rush Limbaugh.
I thought it was a pretty good explanation. They said that the death penalty had been decided by a jury that had dotted every i and crossed every t - it was a completely sound decision. And the judges in this appeal looked back into thousands of pages of the court record and found three words that they thought were prejudicial and therefore overturned the death sentence. A technicality, in other words.
And the editorial blamed street violence on the message that the justice system doesn’t take murder seriously (not that of cops, at least), not the mere existence of guns themselves.
I saw nothing about dotted i’s and crossed t’s, except in taking what they were told at face value maybe. This means, at worst, the case gets sent back to a new jury for a resentencing, and with the mistakes taken out it ought to come out as before, if this was actually due. Nobody has commented on what the mistake might imply for cloudier cases, if it were allowed to slide. “Hard cases make bad law.”
They deliberated for 9 days in the penalty phase. There was no mistake; it was merely that the appeals court judges were looking for a way to void the death penalty, and by combing through the record, they found a phrase they could claim to be dubious. They can do that no matter what; if it hadn’t been that phrase, it would have been something else, equally unimportant and meaningless. But it would have been enough to give the judges cover for overturning the decision, which was their intention from the very start.
The death penalty is extremely rare in New York, at least partly because appeals court judges are determined not to let it happen. And criminals get the message that somebody is always going to be out there to save their hides at the last moment, and the fact that they have killed innocent people doesn’t matter, because innocent life is not valued.
Was the phrase the basis of the appeal? If not, it should not have been considered.
Stop blaming guns for the killings and look to who are doing the killings.
It’s the same group in every city that is affected, and yet all we do is make excuses for them. Environment, a bad home life, uneducated, the same excuses , the same people.
We spend a fortune trying to improve education, trying to improve housing and trying to improve job opportunities, and yet these same people continue the killing.
“But don’t come crying to us when your beloved cities turn into something akin to Mogadishu”
-or worse; Detroit.
I REALLY want a fund that can be used to buy homes next to where these judges and their families live that can be used to house these scum that are released by these liberal fruitcakes. If the scum are allowed to live, they should be living next door to the people who let them live so they can show their “gratitude”.
Ah, the good old days.
Steal, lop off the arm that stole.
Rape, lop off the offending digit.
And in the famous words of Judge ‘Hang ‘em High’
Jury selection starts at 8AM
There will be a fair trial at 10AM.
Public Execution is scheduled for the town square at 5PM.
Attendance mandatory.
Rather than being obsessed with process, I believe society at large is frustrated by the obsession with process exhibited by the 'political class' ... which includes appointed and elected judges.
Politicians pass laws not because we need them, but to justify their existence as politicians. Rather than serve the people and guard the people’s interests they instead guard their personal interests of power and re-election. Judges have gone from interpreting law to making it, also to justify their existence. We need term limits and we need to make sure our representatives represent the community not just in geography but in life experience. This is what you get when you have a professional class that consists of 95% lawyers. We need to change it and get lawyers out of politics.
I could not agree more! We need "regular" people, people who know how life and the world really works.
I don't blame people for not running for public office; too many get themselves and their families dragged through the mud. Still, we need people who have run businesses, people who know how to manage their own personal affairs, people who have paid taxes, people who have seen how the things they do and the choices they make have consequences.
.....Liberal enclaves such as Chicago and NYC deserve exactly what they are getting......
That would be true if they gave a damn. The murders are a boon. the murders reduce the surplus population and cleanse the societal detritus.
One of the great truths of life is contained in a two line conversation in the Music Man:
River City ain't in any trouble.
Gonna have to create some. Must create a desperate need for a boy's band.
The “good news” is that it’s only a remand; it will be retried at the penalty phase, so he theoretically can still get the (delayed) death penalty, assuming a similarly diligent jury.
Per the court’s decision: we vacate the death sentences, and remand, 20 because two arguments made to the jury by the prosecution— both bearing on the critical issues of remorse, acceptance of responsibility, and future dangerousness—impaired Wilson’s constitutional rights.
At page 3 of the 115 page Opinion.
Amen.
You got to consider this was a green prosecution team when it came to this kind of affair. If as stated New York virtually never did this as a matter of policy, then when it finally got around to it is it surprising if it did it wrong?
You claim “no mistake” but nobody has shown us what the statements that came into question were that managed to get two appeals judges to shake their heads, or dug up backgrounds to show that we are looking at two Kagans in those robes, or whatever. Nothing but your, and the news article’s, bald assertions. I am skeptical about anything that comes in that form, no matter what political cause it seems to favor.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.