California death row dysfunction (27 years and counting..)

Reporting from Oceanside -- Vanessa Iberri and Kelly Cartier noticed the balding man in the red Datsun pickup as he drove past them into the Blue Jay Campground of Cleveland National Forest. The 12-year-old girls were leaving the campground ahead of Vanessa's mother, heading for a creek-side picnic spot where they all planned to eat lunch.

The truck turned around, passed the girls again and disappeared around a bend of the dirt road. The driver, Thomas Francis Edwards, an expert marksman who worked at a shooting range, pulled over and waited.

"Hey, girls!" Edwards yelled from the cab when the hikers caught up with his parked pickup. When they turned to look, Edwards, who didn't know either girl, leveled a .22 Ruger automatic pistol at Vanessa's forehead and pulled the trigger, striking her between the eyes. His second shot grazed Kelly's forehead. She had flinched in shock at the first blast, dodging a direct hit.

Vanessa Iberri died two days later. Kelly Cartier survived to testify against Edwards, who was sentenced to death five years and four trials later. It was a frustrated prosecution despite the eyewitness account and solid evidence against Edwards provided by campers who happened upon the grisly scene seconds after the shootings.

It has been 27 years since Vanessa's death, and ever since that day, her father, Joe, has devoted much of his energy to seeing his daughter's killer executed.

"People ask me, 'How do you keep your sanity?' And I tell them I keep on because I'm fighting for my daughter. She still lives within me," he said, tapping his heart.

Since the courts obviously have no intention of carrying out these sentences, they have subverted one of the basic principles of why we have courts in the first place: to keep people from taking justice into their own hands. The failure to do this invariably results in vigilantism, in one form or another.

“Swift and sure” judgment and justice are an essential part of civilization, to prevent blood feuds and revenge, by taking them out of the hands of individuals and families. And courts are always, always at risk of causing vigilantism if they do not do their job impartially.

The California courts have failed to do this, so inevitably, people will come up with other means to exact punishment. In this case, the death of murderers. And since it is too difficult for most people to do directly, a criminal service will arise to do it for them.

That is, a “Death, Incorporated” organization within the prisons, that for a fee will kill death row inmates. While it may begin with other prisoners, likely prison guards will also participate in providing justice, especially for particularly offensive murderers.

Criminal gangs, or which there are many, have members both inside and outside of prison, and once they realize the value of providing this service, they will use some polite means to contact family members of murder victims in such a way that no clear connection can be made to the eventual homicide.

Eventually, this will be expanded to more than just murderers, as once it begins, other offenders, such as child molesters, rapists, and others will be “fair game”, for a price.

And the entire fault rests with the liberal judges who just didn’t want to do their jobs, and failed civilization itself.

And I complain about the typical 15-20 year waiting list we have here in Texas!

You would have the Texas National Guard surrounding the prisons to keep the vigilante’s out if it was taking 27+ years to execute these guys - that is ridiculous!

I think when you kill someone, your “rights” died with your victim! You have too many killers that get out of jail due to clerical errors (one judge in North Carolina let a man convicted of two manslaughter cases off, because the stenographer had too many spelling errors in the final report), technicalities (the officer in the investigation used a racial slur while shooting a movie years before OJ killed his wife - ha/ha), etc...

You disregard other’s rights, then you put your own rights to rest as well!

Kill ‘em all, let God sort ‘em out!

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