Posted on 03/05/2011 9:53:24 AM PST by KeyLargo
Obama backs end to death penalty?
By Dave McKinney
Sun-Times Media
Last Modified: Mar 4, 2011 09:18PM
President Barack Obama has appeared to tip his hand on Illinois’ bill to end the death penalty, which Gov. Pat Quinn is expected to act upon within the week.
During a recent encounter with Quinn at the White House last week, the president praised the bill as well as Illinois’ legalization of civil unions, said state Sen. Kwame Raoul (D-Chicago), a lead legislative backer of the death penalty bill and Obama’s successor in the Illinois Senate. Raoul spoke with Quinn after Quinn returned from Washington, D.C., where he attended National Governors Association meetings.
(Excerpt) Read more at southtownstar.suntimes.com ...
Of course he does! All good liberals want to allow no restrictions on the slaughter of the unborn and total restrictions on the state sanctioned dispatch of human debris that wantonly kills innocents.
Only if the cops are allowed to drop ‘em where they stand, when you have a Jared Loughner situation.
Liberals fully support the death penalty......but only for the unborn, crime victims,conservatives, and Fox news...
Quote: It would appear that the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (err, what?) is giving millions of euros, which they do not find on trees, to American anti-death penalty campaigns. Oh goody. Not only they are using our money for purposes hardly intended, they are also interfering with the domestic politics of another country. Indeed, they are interfering with individual State politics within the United States. This is, of course, the sophisticated soft diplomacy of the EU that is so different from American interference in other people's affairs. Oh, I suppose that was only true under President Bush.
That's my money the b-st-rds are using. I really would like to roll out Mme Guillotine and use her on them....oh, no, I guess that's not the done thing anymore, not even in France.
But, then again, in a short time, who will care what our "rulers" will say?
That is just for “holder’s peoples” no doubt...
Trying to save his own hide from being executed for treason!
Great post. Understanding Obama’s opposition to BAIPA will tell you everything you need to know about that void that wears a human skin.
Social justice, bulls##
“Whatever his convictions, as president Obama does not have the power to abolish the death penalty, which is backed by 65 percent of people in the United States according to recent surveys.
He can, however, push for criminal justice reform and influence death penalty decisions through his nominations to the Supreme Court, which has the sole authority over such matters, according to activists who oppose capital punishment.
The last US president to make public his opposition to the death penalty was Franlin D. Roosevelt. As governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton commuted all death sentences in his state and downgraded them to life in prison, a symbolic gesture that cost him his reelection.”
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gYGUCAMpNiv4aXNm4vwPPJeZpJRQ
I have reluctantly come to oppose the death penalty. There are too many police who are a law unto themselves eager to clear a case, too many show-boating prosecutors who put political success before the truth, too many false confessions, too many innocent men who have been sentenced to death, not to believe that innocent men have never been put to death.
The Liberal View of Crime & Punishment
http://www.youtube.com/user/Battlefield315#p/u/1/h6j_BAHaL1M
Self-protection for future treason trial??
“I have reluctantly come to oppose the death penalty. “
In your state of New Jersey you no longer have to worry about about all of those ‘innocent’ men now.
“With the stroke of a pen this morning, Gov. Jon Corzine made New Jersey the first state to repeal its death penalty in the modern era of capital punishment. December 17, 2007,”
Death penalty is valid retribution
Chicago Sun-Times
Last Modified: Mar 4, 2011 02:10AM
Shannon McNamara was put to death on June 12, 2001. No prosecutor laid down reasons she should die. No defense attorney offered up passionate arguments for her. No jury took the responsibility of deliberating her fate. No appeals process stretching over years offered her hope. No governor could commute her death sentence. No physician or humane observer was there to make sure she died a painless death. No, Shannon McNamara was sadistically, mercilessly murdered in a crime that shocks the minds of decent people.
She had none of the safeguards of trial by jury and years of appeals that society affords the predator who took her life. She was completely innocent and completely at the mercy of one man, and he showed her no mercy. Anthony Mertz, saw Shannon, 21, a physical-education student at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston and a former high school track-and-field star from Rolling Meadows, sunbathing. That marked her for death.
Mertz broke into her apartment, raped, beat and strangled Shannon. She fought back, scratching him and securing under her fingernails DNA material that would be part of what the Illinois Supreme Court called “overwhelming” evidence of his guilt. His perversity knew no limits. He stuffed a washcloth in her mouth. He mutilated her with a kitchen knife. He “put her on display,” prosecutors said, by laying her on the floor naked, except for a bra and T-shirt, which he pulled up to show her breasts.
He sits on Death Row waiting the justice he deserves — unless Gov. Quinn signs legislation repealing capital punishment and then commutes the sentences of those on Death Row. Then Mertz would have the opportunity to make some sort of life for himself behind bars. Shannon McNamara, so innocent and so full of life’s possibilities, had no opportunity to make a life for herself.
“When Shannon died, we died,” her mother, Cindy McNamara, told the jury in his case. “Anthony Mertz has caused me to think things about another human being which I didn’t believe I was capable of thinking. . . . In this way, not only has Anthony Mertz robbed us of our daughter and sister, he has robbed us of a part of our own humanity.”
These are powerful words. So is Cindy McNamara’s appeal to Quinn to veto repeal of capital punishment: “We have the death penalty for a reason — this is the reason!”
Opponents of the death penalty offer several arguments. It’s not consistently applied. They point to Andrew Kokoraleis, executed in 1999 for being part of a satanic gang that roamed the streets looking for women to kidnap, rape, murder and slash for sexual and cannibalistic rituals, while the ringleader, Robin Gecht, got 120 years in prison. Prosecutors didn’t have the same evidence against him as they did for Kokoraleis. It is an injustice Gecht escaped the ultimate penalty, but it doesn’t change the fact that Kokoraleis got the justice he deserved. Each case is decided on its merits.
Another argument is that capital punishment doesn’t deter crime. Academic studies have found that it does. But if deterrence is the gold standard for judging laws, maybe we should stop throwing corrupt politicians in jail because the unending parade of dishonest governors, aldermen and other officeholders in Illinois is testimony to the failure of good-government laws to deter corruption. As the sad soap opera of former Gov. George Ryan and his ailing wife shows, we keep Ryan in jail to make him pay for his crimes. The death penalty is just retribution for a few heinous murders.
Repeal advocates point to the shameful wrongful convictions of the past. The Legislature has enacted reforms. If more commonsense reforms are needed, Quinn should push them. But let’s not throw up our arms and declare society is incompetent to deliver justice for Shannon McNamara and her devastated family. What mercy would Quinn show them by rescuing Mertz from the fate he earned?
http://www.suntimes.com/news/huntley/4113756-417/death-penalty-is-valid-retribution.html?print=true
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