Posted on 05/18/2024 9:26:33 AM PDT by CheshireTheCat
Just after midnight this date in 1990, Dalton Prejean was electrocuted in Louisiana for murdering state trooper Donald Cleveland.
A 17-year-old (at the time of the crime) black youth who tested just this side of mentally disabled, Prejean shot Cleveland during a traffic stop. (He was, at the time, just seven months out of a reform school stint he had served for murdering a taxi driver at the tender age of 14.)
It was a three-day trial with an all-white jury, and not much question as to Prejean’s culpability.
But as he neared the execution of that sentence, his youth and his limited candlepower loomed ever larger. They would generate worldwide attention with some heated rhetoric like this one from Amnesty International’s southern regional director:
“I doubt that in documented recent world history there is an execution” with “such a pile of reasons not to do it.”
The Louisiana board of pardons agreed — it recommended commutation — but Gov. Buddy Roemer did not.
Dalton Prejean’s was the first execution of a juvenile offender in the United States since the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of that practice in the 1989 decision Stanford v. Kentucky. That decision was reversed in 2005, and minors are no longer eligible for death-sentencing in the U.S.
A repeat murderer should be executed, even if he’s a few months short of some arbitrary age of “adulthood”.
And he hasn’t killed anyone since.
and the problem is...?
Mental disability is NOT an excuse for abjuring the death penalty. Such a one is as likely or more likely to kill again upon release. Mental disability is NOT an excuse to allow him to kill again and again.
No problem. I was just rather surprised that as recently as 1990 someone was executed for a murder committed when he was under the age of majority.
“Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.” —Adam Smith
I found this interesting: From Wikipedia,
“As of 2024, the only places that still reserve the electric chair as an option for execution are the U.S. states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky and Tennessee. Electrocution is also authorized in Florida if lethal injection is found unconstitutional.”
he was competent enough to
-get a gun
-get ammo for the gun
-load it
-carry it
-aim it
-pull the trigger
-TWICE
good enough
-BYE!
2 murders before 18 years old. Head Shake.
There’s an old Texas saying “Some people just need kill’n”.
3 years for murder. They didn’t even keep him imprisoned until he was 18 or 21.
Whomever failed to apply the death sentence for the first murder, should have been executed along with him for the second one.
Not making excuses. He was 14 when he murdered the first person.
This time, I’m pretty certain he will be executed.
30+ years ago actually
Thanks for placing it, it all happened a long time ago.
We are facing an enormous legal challenge with this Huge Invasion of the USA from all over the world. Including known Terrorists, Criminal released from foreign jails, Drug Cartels, Communist, Fascists and Human traffickers.
Do you think we are up to that task with our current court system?
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