Posted on 05/15/2009 2:58:43 PM PDT by JoeProBono
A man convicted of battering his girlfriend's 8-year-old son and stuffing the body in a freezer was put to death Thursday in Oklahoma, while a man in Alabama was executed for fatally stabbing a mother of six.
Donald Lee Gilson, 48, proclaimed his innocence in the death of Shane Coffman before he was injected in Oklahoma with a lethal combination of drugs.
"I'm an innocent man but ... I get to go to heaven and I'll see Shane tonight," he said in his final statement. He was pronounced dead at 6:19 p.m.
Gilson's parents, sister, a friend and a pastor witnessed the execution, and about a dozen members of the victim's family watched from behind a one-way glass.
He became the second person to be executed this year in Oklahoma.
In 1998, Gilson was convicted of first-degree murder in Shane's death in 1995. An autopsy showed fractures to the boy's skull, his collarbone, shoulder blades, ribs, legs and spine and a tooth missing from his jaw.
Court records indicate that four other children who lived with Gilson and girlfriend Bertha Jean Coffman in a mobile home in Cleveland County showed abuse, and two of the children were emaciated. One of the children told investigators that Gilson beat the boy with a board and then placed him in a bathtub as punishment for going to the bathroom on a rug.
So if the law,as put to paper by duly elected representatives,stated that a first offense puppy hugger is to be executed and you were on the jury determining the fate of a solidly prosecuted puppy hugger you would,as a juror,vote not guilty?
Anarchy and chaos,my friend.
And I love puppies.
You said — Anarchy and chaos,my friend.
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You would be better off having me on a jury than a liberal... LOL...
In any case, I’m going to be the *absolute final authority* on that jury, for protecting the rights of citizens against the over-arching power of an intrusive government, no matter what, because that’s exactly what the founding fathers had in mind for the jury.
You advocate jury nullification in certain cases if they task your hard held principles and that's good for you.
It's just not the law.
Righteous relativism is still relativism.
But since you are no Leftist at least your subversion is not so bad and may even be good in the end.
It's just not the law;)
BTTT! Well stated.
You said — “Absolute final authority,” as interpreted by the Founders,belongs and I pray still does,to devine providence.
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Well, not the way I read it, which is the reason why there’s no double jeopardy when there’s a not guilty verdict... :-)
That’s what I call absolute final authority.
And when you’re in the jury box, you’re the god of the moment, for what’s before you. No legislator, no judge, no lawyer and no government can tell you how to decide, no matter what. If a law is on the books and you decide it’s unjust, it’s “out the window” at that point, if you decide so, as part of the jury.
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You said — It’s just not the law.
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It becomes the “law” when you make it happen with a jury decision (in that case). And if juries repeatedly do so with some stupid and inane law, then the legislators will get the idea, along with the judges and prosecutors, and the law will probably not be enforced and it will probably be overhauled.
When the jury “makes it happen” with a “not guilty” with the jury decision, that’s exactly what the Founding Fathers had in mind for juries to do — in order to limit any over-reaching powers of the government that they might try to enforce. The juries will limit the government in that way. They *are the law* in that regard — against the government, if it attempts to go beyond its powers and act against citizens in a way that juries think it should not.
Soon as it's over put on, Celebrate.
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