Posted on 05/21/2011 6:10:12 PM PDT by matt04
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) _ A Connecticut legislative leader says there are not enough votes to repeal the state’s death penalty this session.
Senate President Donald Williams said Friday the bill lacks enough support after two lawmakers said they would not support repeal this session after meeting with Dr. William Petit, the lone survivor of a 2007 Cheshire home invasion in which his wife and two daughters were killed.
(Excerpt) Read more at connecticut.cbslocal.com ...
I’m a Constitutional Christian conservative and an economic libertarian, but I part ways with the standard conservative stance about the death penalty: I’m agin’ it. It’s useless, does more harm than good, and allows for no mistake in human judgement which itself is fatal.
Me too. A better penalty would be life in solitary with endless loops of Obama Speeches 24/7.
Cruel and unusual...never happen.
There are many cases where it is beyond doubt that the murderer is guilty. You are robotically against the death penalty in those cases too. You might be diffeent but from me.... If someone very close to me is murdered, I'll feel a lot better when the killer is tried and executed. This is known as justice
Give you an example ~ there is no death penalty in Detroit and hasn't been for well over a century. They had 308 murders in Detroit last year.
Here in Virginia there is a death penalty.
We are also next door to Maryland which has the second highest murder rate in America (and no death penalty).
Anyway, Virginia had about 240 murders last year.
We have 8 million people. Detroit has about 700,000 people ~ or 1/11 the number in Virginia.
So, what's the difference? Is it per capita income? Is it the number of black people? Is it........ hey, maybe it has something to do with the CULTURE ~ we execute stone cold killers. Detroit puts them in charge of stuff.
That could be it!
Dr. Dean once noted that as Governor of Vt. he had learned a lot about the death penalty. He said that our system is such that just about the only guys put away for life are the worst of the worst ~ people who going to kill again and again if turned loose.
He also noted that even if they stay in prison they will kill ~ and it'll be some innocent person ~ maybe a white collar criminal, or a guard, or a visitor or maybe another killer ~ but the statistics are THEY WILL KILL SOMEONE and maybe more!
What that means is that if they are not executed first all you've done is line some stranger up for killing.
The worst of the worst must be executed.
With the Patriot Act in place, there’s no need for any state to have the death penalty. I’m strongly against the death penalty.
Interesting how the Liberals need a long enough gap between horrific murders to get their death penalty revoked.
So much for being principled.
One day I decided to visit the death row page on the Texas Prisons website. I read the rap sheets of all the criminals awaiting execution and never ran across a single person that was on death row for one or two offenses. Every person had serious assault and/or robbery charges back to when they were juveniles. Almost every one had lived an angry life full of friends, family and strangers victimized by their behavior.
A person being executed for a crime they didn't commit is probably something that does happen, but that is long way from saying an innocent man was put to death.
As far as it being a deterrent...career criminals function well in prison. A life in prison for a career criminal isn't nearly the threat that the death penalty is.
I am proud of Texas and our use of the death penalty.
A fate worst than death.
Good for you. If somebody kills your family you can tell it to the judge. Meanwhile, leave other people who want closure alone. If it happened to me I would happily jam the needles into the perp myself.
I sure Dr. William Petit shares your feel-good kumbaya feeling also,,,well I guess not!
It has been shown many times over in the field of criminal justice, that true restoration of the victim doesn't happen with vengeance but with forgiveness.
This is an open forum and a good place to air out these thoughts. The fact is that the most successful penal programs in the U.S. are not based on vengeance but protection of victims and potential victims and behavioral ownership by the criminals. Many people and many lives witness over and over again that vengeance gives no real closure to the victims at all.
Countless numbers of victims have testified of the emptiness they felt after the momentary rush of pleasure at seeing the criminal's blood spilt. Others continue to seeth long after, to their own hurt. Still others have shown that the only true relief and restoration of the victim is forgiveness not vengeance - that when they by God's grace were finally able to forgive and let go, they were free.
It's not about restoration, it's about justice. The eye for an eye kind.
That's not real justice, that's vengeance. The eye for eye kind.
God showed us what real Justice was in the coming of the Just One who didn't require you and I to pay eye for an eye for our wrongdoings because it is utterly impossible for us to do so. So he forgave us and took the hit himself. That's the mercy of God that "rejoices against judgment." And He said, "Go and do thou likewise."
You’re wrong.
Nice assertion. Lousy argument.
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