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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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Comment #41 Removed by Moderator

To: Paradox
My concern is with meting out an irreversible punishment in a system of imperfect justice.

I'm with you on this.

42 posted on 06/05/2016 7:52:32 AM PDT by Ol' Dan Tucker (...and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many... Daniel 8:25)
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To: 5150 FREEPER
That's great. You pay for those 1,000. I'd rather spend a dollar on a .30-06 round and get the job over with.

Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!

43 posted on 06/05/2016 8:08:31 AM PDT by wku man (Just One Gun, the latest from 10 Pound Test - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6uFqQenIU4)
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To: 5150 FREEPER

Murderers often escape from prison, but I have yet to hear of one escaping from the grave.

Death penalties, even if rarely enforced, are a useful tool for plea-bargaining - especially if the murderer points out the graves location so the family can have closure of a sort.

IMO, there can never be closure, only vengeance when the murderer is executed. (A pity the founding fathers remove the “cruel and unusual” bit.)

A further IMO is that if there is conclusive DNA and or trace evidence against the murderer, there is no probation at all and preferably, the appeals procedure is considerably shortened. We have people on death row who have lived there longer than the life of their victims.


44 posted on 06/05/2016 8:11:52 AM PDT by Oatka (Beware of an old man in a profession where men usually die young.)
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To: 5150 FREEPER

I’ll agree to ban the death penalty if abortion is banned at the same time and the two tied together.


45 posted on 06/05/2016 8:13:28 AM PDT by libertylover (The problem with Obama is not that his skin is too black, it's that his ideas are too RED.)
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To: 5150 FREEPER

“Life in prison” is a coward’s death penalty.


46 posted on 06/05/2016 8:58:50 AM PDT by StormPrepper
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To: 5150 FREEPER

I have a profoundly strong counter argument.

The flip side of the government inability to execute even the most hateful serial killers, is gun liberty.

The vast, unreasonably complex and convoluted pipes that have been created solely to inhibit the death penalty, have indeed “clogged the toilet.” Slapping so many limits on the process that *nobody* can be expeditiously terminated.

However, gun liberty changes that dramatically. If an armed robber is ingloriously gunned down by an armed citizen, he has no lawyer, judge, jury, ACLU, or other appeal to evade justice.

He did not have to be a serial killer. An ordinary killer, or even attempted killer, a terrorist, a robber or burglar, a rapist or molester, or even an angry drunk who wants to beat someone else, might get his trial and execution in the same *moment*.

And the public will not give a damn. Good riddance to bad rubbish. It will not matter if he is retarded, was abused as a child, etc., ad nauseum.

Bullets do not care. They are “The People’s” capital punishment.


47 posted on 06/05/2016 9:00:17 AM PDT by yefragetuwrabrumuy ("Don't compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative." -Obama, 09-24-11)
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To: 5150 FREEPER

Uh, conservatives...it’s Biblically mandated.


48 posted on 06/05/2016 9:00:26 AM PDT by onedoug
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To: Frankie Yale

I am a Catholic as well and cannot abide by capital punishment. I understand everyone’s point, but can’t reconcile it personally.


49 posted on 06/05/2016 10:07:18 AM PDT by irish guard
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To: 5150 FREEPER

I do not want to pay to keep the worst killers alive.

Almost every single person on death row (in the states that have the death penalty) are guilty. The solution is not to keep people who deserve execution alive, the solution is a better justice system to factually determine who is innocent and who is guilty.


50 posted on 06/05/2016 7:20:03 PM PDT by little jeremiah (Half the truth is often a great lie. B. FrankliIn)
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To: Rapscallion

Not only that, executions need to be sped way, way up.


51 posted on 06/05/2016 7:20:38 PM PDT by little jeremiah (Half the truth is often a great lie. B. FrankliIn)
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To: IronJack
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?

Umm, no, its not the same thing, sorry. Still against it, and still a conservative.

52 posted on 06/06/2016 5:44:57 AM PDT by Paradox (My positions can evolve, but Principles should be immutable.)
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To: Paradox

Not much of a rebuttal. But you’re free to believe what you want.


53 posted on 06/06/2016 6:23:42 AM PDT by IronJack
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To: Frankie Yale
That's the thing, very few if any that have been exonerated by DNA evidence were fine, upstanding citizens.

In general, they were known scumbags with previous convictions. Often, they are very guilty and were involved in the murder, but didn't "pull the trigger."

The lack of any real evidence that we are putting any innocent people to death means the whole anti-capital punishment movement is a sham.

54 posted on 06/08/2016 8:52:11 PM PDT by hopespringseternal
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