Grim milestone: Texas set to execute 500th inmate

Yahoo News (AP) ^ | 6/25/2013 | MICHAEL GRACZYK

[South40]

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — Jim Willett remembers the night of Dec. 6, 1982, when he was assigned to guard a mortuary van that had arrived at the death house at the Huntsville prison.

"I remember thinking: We're really going to do this. This is really going to happen," says Willett, who was a captain for the Texas Department of Corrections.

When the van pulled away early the next morning, it carried to a nearby funeral home the body of convicted killer Charlie Brooks, who had just become the first Texas prisoner executed since a Supreme Court ruling six years earlier allowed the death penalty to resume in the United States.

[Common Sense 101]

If you come down to Texas and kill someone, we’ll kill you back. That’s our policy. - Ron White

[Carriage Hill]

Many states are trying to halt the death penalty; Texas put-in an express lane to it! Bravo, TX!

[Vigilanteman]

Society order and civilization tends to advance when we value the lives of innocent people and demand swift justice from their murderers. It tends to decline when we don't.

The best case in point is the history of Ft. Smith, Arkansas which was transformed from a wild frontier town which was a haven of outlaws to a nice quiet community of church goers within a mere half-generation after introducing this device and using it consistently as needed:

[TheBattman]

The LEFTIST media at it again.

How in the world can one be adamantly pro-infanticide, yet adamantly against putting murderers to death? On the one hand, you have unborn babies guilty only of being conceived (which obviously they had not control over). On the other - a person who CHOSE to commit murder (and almost always other crimes as well)...

What an amazing contradiction.

[Carriage Hill]

Only God brings justice. Texas is just speeding-up “the meeting”. LOL.

[Jim Robinson]

Don’t mess in Texas.

[JRios1968]

In Texas we have the death penalty. And we USE it.

[Feckless]

Grim? Not on your life! I’m PROUD of my state for protecting the public.

[Salgak]

It **IS** a grim number. Hordes of criminals have managed to evade justice for their crimes. . . (evil grin)

[Hot Tabasco]

Grim? This should be celebrated.

I would agree but I don't think a trip to Disney World is in the cards for the guy........

[rlmorel]

It is grim in that it illustrates we have horrible, violent crimes in a non-utopian society.

What makes this even more grim and serious is that liberals have so defanged any concept of swift and just punishment that it is so commonplace that decades pass before the administration of justice for these heinous cringes occurs that there is zero deterrent effect.

THAT is what is grim.

[righttackle44]

There is a difference between deserved justice and cruelty. You suggest cruelty.

[dfwgator]

And it has a zero recidivism rate.

[dfwgator]

Not as cruel as what they did to their victims.

[Georgia Girl 2]

I see 500 murderes who will never murder again.

[Jim Robinson]

I mean to kill you in one minute, Ned. Or see you hanged in Fort Smith at Judge Parker’s convenience.

[WestTexasWend]

My only regret is that Shiner didn’t do a commemorative beer for this. Bock’ll do.

[Lancey Howard]

They should just serve them some molded bread and water for their final meal.

They should be offered the same final meal they offered their victims before they murdered them.

[SpinnerWebb]

That’s bold talk for a one-eyed fat man!

[3Fingas]

The best deterrence ever.