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Meet the red-state conservatives fighting to abolish the death penalty
WASH POST ^ | 6/3/16 | Marin Cogan

Posted on 06/05/2016 4:48:39 AM PDT by 5150 FREEPER

Colby Coash can point to the moment his evolution in thinking about the death penalty began.

It was Sept. 3, 1994, and Coash — now a conservative senator in the Nebraska legislature but then a freshman at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln — decided to go with some friends to the state penitentiary. Willie Otey, convicted of first-degree murder, was set to be executed at midnight, and people were gathering in the parking lot outside. Coash can still remember the scene: the live band, the grilling meat, the revelers popping cans of beer and chanting, “Fry him!”

“You wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference between the parking lot of the penitentiary and a tailgate. It was pretty ugly,” Coash says now. Even though he went to the event as a supporter of capital punishment, he says, “it kind of changed my heart. I thought, ‘I don’t want to be a part of state-sponsored killing.’ ”

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; US: Nebraska
KEYWORDS: communistagenda; crimeadvocacy; leftists; purmarxism
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To: 5150 FREEPER
Would you rather a thousand innocent people languish in prison?

Read the whole story of "Walkin' Willie" Otey and Jane McManus.

21 posted on 06/05/2016 5:36:20 AM PDT by IronJack
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To: Nifster; fulltlt
. . . or even for engineering a murder outside of prison. See post #13.

Like most libtard positions, declaring yourself opposed to the ultimate punishment makes you look noble and feel good while pushing the consequences of your decision off on others.

22 posted on 06/05/2016 5:37:19 AM PDT by Vigilanteman (ObaMao: Fake America, Fake Messiah, Fake Black man. How many fakes can you fit into one Zer0?)
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To: Yashcheritsiy

Name me any libtard position which isn’t.


23 posted on 06/05/2016 5:38:14 AM PDT by Vigilanteman (ObaMao: Fake America, Fake Messiah, Fake Black man. How many fakes can you fit into one Zer0?)
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To: 5150 FREEPER

Hang the bastard, hang him high.
Hoist his body to the sky.
It’s as nice as a day can be.
Won’t you come to the hanging with me?

Hang the bastard, hang him high.
Hoist his body to the sky.
It’s as nice as a day can be.
Won’t you come to the hanging with me?

Hang the bastard, hang him well.
Send his sorry soul to hell.
When his neckbone snaps we’ll know.
When the cannibal won’t be killing anymore.

His face will turn red,
Then purple, then blue.
We’ll watch from up here
To get a good view.
And when his eyes bug out we’ll know,
It’s the end of him
And the end of the show!

So hang the bastard, hang him with cheer.
We’ll make some hot dogs
And drink a few beers.
And when his tongue rolls out we’ll know,
It’s the end of the show
And we all can go home!

But not till we hang the bastard, hang him here.
The most exciting thing this town has seen in years.
When his body stops jerking we’ll know,
It’s the end of him, it’s the end of him,
It’s the end of him,
And the end of the show.

[Cowbell solo]

So hang the bastard, hang him high.
Kiss his guilty butt goodbye.
It’s as nice as a day can be.
Won’t you come to the hanging with me?

His veins will pop out all over his head.
We’ll tickle his armpits to make sure he’s dead.
And when his tongue rolls out we’ll know,
It’s the end of him and we all can go home!

But not till we
Hang the bastard, hang him high.

Hoist his body to the sky.
When his body stops jerking we’ll know,
It’s the end of him, it’s the end of him,
It’s the end of him!
Let’s get on with the show!

Hooray!


24 posted on 06/05/2016 5:40:41 AM PDT by Dirt for sale (QS)
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To: Vigilanteman
Like most libtard positions, declaring yourself opposed to the ultimate punishment makes you look noble and feel good while pushing the consequences of your decision off on others.

It's called "virtue signalling."

25 posted on 06/05/2016 5:45:00 AM PDT by Yashcheritsiy (You can't have a constitution without a country to go with it)
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To: 5150 FREEPER

1. Identify five innocent persons put to death recently and we can talk. Or even one, if you can.

2. These people who sit in prison convicted of crimes are almost always “known scumbags” with a a long criminal history. It is extremely rare to see someone with no criminal history at all convicted of a crime they didn’t commit.


26 posted on 06/05/2016 5:45:33 AM PDT by hopespringseternal
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To: Paradox
My concern is with meting out an irreversible punishment in a system of imperfect justice.

ALL punishment is "irreversible." If you put an innocent man behind bars for 20 years, upon the discovery of his innocence, how do you restore the 20 years?

Justice is, by nature, retributive and reactive. If the scales are to be balanced, the punishment must equal the crime. The maximum offense demands the maximum payment. Since the most punishment the system can impose and still be constitutional is a death sentence, in cases where the offense is as heinous as imaginable, the death penalty is not only tolerable, it is REQUIRED as the only means to satisfy justice. Any lesser penalty diminishes the value of the victim's suffering and elevates the offender above not only that victim but society itself.

It takes courage to apply the ultimate discipline, but a worthy society will rise to that demand.

27 posted on 06/05/2016 5:47:11 AM PDT by IronJack
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To: Dirt for sale
There is a problem with people enjoying the spectacle of an execution and a reason why we do them behind prison walls now.

I do believe that public executions as practiced by the 1890s were still dignified-- people gathered to witness, sang hymns and watched the condemned get a hood over their heads before the trap door was sprung.

If you could keep this dignified method, I believe they would even have a place today. But between the extremes of those who don't think it should be done to anyone for any reason and those who get their jollies looking at the unhooded spectacle which you describe, I don't see how we could bring it back the way we should.

28 posted on 06/05/2016 5:50:21 AM PDT by Vigilanteman (ObaMao: Fake America, Fake Messiah, Fake Black man. How many fakes can you fit into one Zer0?)
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To: Paradox

I’m against it but for a different reason. I think God gets to decide who dies, not me or our justice system. I’m all for putting them in a prison and paying to let them think about their awful decisions. And yet according to Rapscallion and others,they believe I am not a conservative. I’ll live with my religious beliefs and my own comfort of my conservative positions.


29 posted on 06/05/2016 5:51:38 AM PDT by irish guard
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To: IronJack
Any lesser penalty diminishes the value of the victim's suffering and elevates the offender above not only that victim but society itself.

ALL of your statement was profoundly true, but this was the best part.

30 posted on 06/05/2016 5:53:42 AM PDT by Vigilanteman (ObaMao: Fake America, Fake Messiah, Fake Black man. How many fakes can you fit into one Zer0?)
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To: 5150 FREEPER
Would rather a thousand people convicted of murder languish in prison than to put to death one innocent person.

That is not the set of alternatives we face. We have a choice between:

- executing the worst of the worst, and occasionally, perhaps, getting one wrong, or

- life without parole for the worst of the worst, and occasionally having them kill a fellow prisoner, arrange the killing of someone outside, released in error, released intentionally for political pandering, or escape.

The innocent are at risk both ways. Having been a juror, and having been targeted by violent criminals, I know which risk I will choose. I would rather take the risk of a juror who knows how serious it is getting it wrong, rather than the much greater risk of a criminal beyond redemption hurting an innocent person because the judicial system refused to do the right thing.

Not only do I support the death penalty, I think it should be vastly expanded. Rape a child? Death. Kidnapping and rape? Death. Forcible rape using a weapon against a stranger? Death. Attempted murder, when a success would have earned the death penalty? Death. Terrorism? Death.

31 posted on 06/05/2016 5:55:13 AM PDT by Pollster1 (Somebody who agrees with me 80% of the time is a friend and ally, not a 20% traitor. - Ronald Reagan)
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To: Pollster1

Liberals are against the death penalty until a crime is committed against their family. Problem with the death penalty is it takes way too long to implement.

Trial, appeal, implement sentence. Killing a cop, kidnap murder, planned murder and third time felony conviction should all receive death penalty.

Justice needs to be swift.


32 posted on 06/05/2016 6:06:58 AM PDT by EQAndyBuzz (Her name is no longer is Hillary. It's Hilarity. Try it on for size, it's fun to say)
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To: 5150 FREEPER
.. Coash can still remember the scene: the live band, the grilling meat, the revelers popping cans of beer and chanting, “Fry him!” ..

Gettin' goosebumps here! Was anyone playing More Than A Feeling on their car stereo?

33 posted on 06/05/2016 6:28:00 AM PDT by Byron_the_Aussie (We cannot allow Hillary Clinton to become the next Angela Merkel)
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Comment #37 Removed by Moderator

To: 5150 FREEPER

In Illinois in 2 adjacent counties County States Attorneys, establishment figures of opposite political parties, knowingly prosecuted, framed and convicted young men of crimes to which the prosecutors knew they were innocent.

Those States Attorneys did it to appear to be tough on crime and to advance to higher office. The voters backed them and they did rise to higher office. Cheating benefitted them.

The problem is us voters. As long as we back our establishment candidate in a form of identity politics where being of the right political party automatically gets our support, then we get the government we deserve.

As long as we who do not automatically support our identified party a allow ourselves to be pandered to by obvious pandering and twisting of the truth by the politicians we get what we deserve.


38 posted on 06/05/2016 6:59:07 AM PDT by spintreebob
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To: JBW1949

I am ambivalent about the death penalty. One reason is that I wonder about the accuracy of DNA evidence. I don’t have the technical knowledge to question it. I just know that human knowledge, as it advances, often shows us that things are sometimes less certain than they seemed. Plus, pretty much all evidence requires some amount of interpretation.


39 posted on 06/05/2016 7:09:23 AM PDT by TexasKamaAina
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To: Vigilanteman

Precisely


40 posted on 06/05/2016 7:10:22 AM PDT by Nifster (I see puppy dogs in the clouds)
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