Posted on 11/29/2004 1:42:39 PM PST by LouAvul
Some family members of violent-crime victims are jaded by California's sluggish rate of executing condemned killers.
"If it went faster, the death penalty would be a deterrent," said Carole Carrington, the mother and grandmother of two Yosemite sightseers murdered by handyman Cary Stayner in 1999.
Modesto's Scott Peterson, 32, faces a sentence of death or life in prison without the possibility of parole at the conclusion of a penalty phase scheduled to begin Tuesday. He was convicted Nov. 12 of murdering his pregnant wife, Laci, and their unborn son, Conner.
Stayner killed four people in all. In federal court, he received a life term for his killing of a Yosemite naturalist. In state court, for his killing of Carrington's daughter and granddaughter, and their friend, he received a death sentence. That was two years ago.
Carrington and her family aren't holding their breath.
Appeals are required in the state's death row cases. Recent history suggests that it takes officials about four years to appoint appellate lawyers, who then spend about a year studying a case and another preparing arguments.
"So it'll be like seven years before an appeal happens," Carrington said.
Once a conviction is affirmed by the state Supreme Court, inmates have an array of additional appeals available to them.
The result: Of California's 635 death row inmates, Supreme Court justices have affirmed sentences of only 174. And no inmate in this state has been executed since January 2002.
(Excerpt) Read more at modbee.com ...
Death by public stoning is my preference. For lesser crimes, I still have a liking for the stockade in the public square. Those are what I call deterrents!
The vast majority of inmates on CA's death row will die of old age. Many of them now are geriatric, and need walkers and wheelchairs, and are suffering from other diseases of old age, like demntia. And of course, the California taxpayer is picking of the tab for their medical care.
As Christian (Protestant not Catholic, btw) I am really bothered by the death penalty. I wish we would replace it with life in prison with no chance of parole.
I'm bothered by it as a limited government aficionado.
Snuffin' lives is more power than I care to allot to government.
The solution is for W to appoint strict constructionists to the Supreme Court who who don't see emanations from penumbras everytime they read the constitution.
I agree completely... activist judges try to make up rights that aren't in the Constitution in order to make it suit their underlying political agenda, and that needs to stop. I'm for human cloning, but only to make 8 clones of Scalia.
Life without parole is a life. Would you be willing to adopt a killer and pay for all those years of incarceration?
The legal costs for all the appeals ain't cheap either. We could always cut down on the appeal process, but then I definitely have to agree with the poster who said that legally snuffing people is not a power he wants to yield to the government.
well thats what people in cali want. Taxpaid medicare
Seriously..TX is on the right track. I know they have some sort of legal loophope the flaunt to speed the process up. CA is just worthless.
A bullet is only a matter of cents. The gun a one time fee. And i'll do it for free.
comedian John White aka "Tater Salad" has a good bit on this. He says in Texas (where he's from) they're trying to
pass a law that if there are 3 credible eyewitnesses to
a felony murder, they can expedite execution. So when many
states are trying to ban the death penalty, mine is putting
in an 'express lane'.
(he's in favor of capitol punishment, by the way.)
"Death penalty works too slowly, families say "
Oh, I don't know about that. Slow and painful souds right to me.
Actually, California does have life withouth the possibility of parole.
A bullet is too quick. We need either a hanging or a bullet to the throat. Now I know that's pretty gory, but hey, murder aint pretty either.
Twenty four years ago my cousin in south Alabama was 22 and had been married to a lovely young woman for about a year. Their first child was due less than a month away from the night he was gunned down like a rabid dog by a killer on a killing spree. He was robbed of around $50.00 or so that was in the register at his father's (my uncle) bait and tackle shop which was less than a tenth of a mile from his father's house. My cousin was discovered in a pool of blood with most of his head missing by his pregnant wife, his mother, and his father coming back from the grocery store. The killer killed 5 or 6 people over a week's time and was caught. Tried, convicted, and after losing all his appeals sent to yellow mama which is Alabama's electric chair. I would have given a year's salary to watch.
I am a very caring, compassionate, Christian, but I have yet to see how that keeps me from killing a wolf among the flock.
Have a nice day.
I wouldn't be so hasty to say that this is what the people of California want. We had an anti-death penalty judge on the state supreme court in the 80's, and she lost her seat on the bench when voters tossed her out in a retention vote (Rose Bird). If the people of California were overwhelmingly against the death penalty, the population of death row wouldn't continue to grow each year. I'm not sure how the appeals process got to be so cumbersome and lengthy, but it doesn't reflect the wishes of most Californians. According to a SFGate article published March 4, 2004, 68% of Californians support the death penalty. That being the case, I would hazard a guess that these same Californians aren't particularly interested in paying for the medical care for these dirtbags for the rest of their natural lives.
If you have any suggestions for speeding up the endless appeal processes to get it down to a reasonable timeframe, as in Texas, I and many other Californians would be happy to hear it.
If you ask me the best death penalty is for the convict to be locked in a room with the victim(s) family. They would be provided a aluminum baseball bat and told the rest was up to them. To prevent any possiblity of the convict taking the bat, his hands would be flexcuffed behind his back.
Agreed. Life without parole is not an option in most murder cases. I hope Scott Peterson gets the big D as well. Wife killers are one of the lowest of the low.
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