Posted on 01/11/2003 1:56:23 PM PST by PowerTee
Edited on 04/13/2004 1:40:15 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
NEW YORK -- Robert Blecker sat quietly as other professors ticked off their reasons for opposing the death penalty: It's unfair to blacks. It doesn't really deter crime. Innocent people could be executed.
But Blecker, a professor at New York Law School, was having none of it. When it was his turn to speak at the recent death-penalty forum at John Jay College, he summed up his support for executions in three words: ''Barbara Jo Brown.''
(Excerpt) Read more at usatoday.com ...
Beyond all this, I would support DNA testing of all murder trials where it was relevent to the particular case and would increase the number of executions we could process.
• "Gypsy" Bob Harper
--Convicted of murder, given a so-called "life" sentence.
--Escaped from a Michigan prison and killed two persons.
--Recaptured, then killed the prison warden and his deputy.
• Ed Jover
--Convicted committed two murders, sentenced to execution
--Execution overturned and he received clemency for each
--Murdered twice more after clemeny.
• Joseph Taborsky
--Sentenced to death in Connecticut for 1951 murder
--Freed when the courts overturned the sentence on technitalities.
--Later was found guilty for another murder, for which he was electrocuted in May 1960. Before his execution, he confessed to the 1951 murder.
• Allen Pruitt
--Convicted of knife slaying of a newsstand operator and sentenced to "life" in prison.
--Later charged with fatally stabbing a prison doctor and an assistant prison superintendent, but was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
--In 1968, his conviction was overturned on a technicality by the Virginia Supreme Court. He was re-tried, again found guilty, but given a 20-year sentence instead of life. Since he had already served 18 years, and had some time off for "good behavior," he was released.
--December 31, 1971: Arrested and charged in the murder of two men in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
• Richard Biegenwald
--Murdered a store owner during a robbery in New Jersey.
--Convicted, given a "life" sentence rather than death.
--After serving 17 years, he was paroled. He violated his parole, was returned to prison, but was again paroled in 1980.
--He then shot and killed an 18-year-old Asbury Park, New Jersey girl. He also killed three other 17-year-old New Jersey girls and a 34-year-old man.
•Oral Kolame
--Found gulity of brutally murdering his wife. Pleaded with the judge and jury to impose the death sentence, but was given "life" instead.
--Later killed a fellow inmate and was executed for the second killing in 1966.
• Arthur James Julius
--Convicted of murder and sentenced to "life" in prison.
--In 1978, he was given a brief leave from prison, during which he raped and murdered a cousin.
--He was sentenced to death for that crime and was executed on November 17, 1989.
• Jimmy Lee Gray
--Conviction for killing a 16-year-old high school girl and given a "life" sentence
--Later freed on parole thanks to "good" behavior.
--Kidnapped, sodomized, and suffocated a three-year-old Mississippi girl. He was executed for that second killing on September 2, 1983.
• Timothy Charles Palmes
--Found gulity of a manslaughter conviction
--Was on probation fo this murder when he and two accomplices robbed and brutally murdered a Florida furniture store owner.
--Palmes was executed for the killing on November 8, 1984. An accomplice, Ronald Straight, was executed on May 20, 1986.
•Wayne Robert Felde
--Convicted of manslaughter in Maryland
--Later given a work release program
--Violated parole, while being taken to jail in handcuffs, pulled a gun hidden in his pants and killed a policeman.
• Donald Dillbeck
--Convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison for murdering a Florida sheriff.
-- In 1983, he tried to escape. In January of this year he was transferred to a minimum-security facility. On June 22nd, he walked away from a ten-inmate crew catering a school banquet.
--Two days later, he was arrested and charged with stabbing a woman to death at a Tallahassee shopping mall.
• Jack Henry Abbott
--Convicted killer, serving "life" sentence in New York for murder of fellow inmate
--In 1981, author Norman Mailer and many other New York literati embraced Abbott and succeeded in having him released early from a Utah prison.
--July 18, 1981 (six-weeks after his release), Abbott stabbed actor Richard Adan to death in New York. He was convicted of manslaughter and received a "15-year-to-life sentence." Mrs. Adan sued Abbott for her husband's wrongful death and her pain and suffering.
--On June 15, 1990, a jury awarded her nearly $7.6 million.
• Lowell Jensen and Gene Dinkins
--Both serving "life" terms in Marion, IL for previously murdering inmates
--On October 22, 1983 at the federal penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, two prison guards were murdered in two separate instances by the inmates
--On November 9, 1983 the Associate U.S. Attorney General told a Senate subcommittee that it is impossible to punish or even deter such prison murders because, without a death sentence, a violent life-termer has free rein "to continue to murder as opportunity and his perverse motives dictate. "
• Benny Lee Chaffin
--Convicted of murder in Texas, but not executed
--Later kidnapped, raped, and murdered a 9-year-old Springfield, Oregon girl.
-- The same jury that convicted him for killing the young girl refused to sentence him to death because two of the 12 jurors said they "could not determine" whether or not he would be a future threat to societ.
• Thomas Eugene Creech
---Convicted of three murders and had claimed a role in more than 40 killings in 13 states as a paid killer for a motorcycle gang, but never sentenced to death
-- Later killed a fellow prison inmate in 1981 and was sentenced to death.
--1986: his execution was stayed by a federal judge and has yet to be carried out.
•Dalton Prejean
-- When he was 14, he was convicted of killing a taxi driver.
-- When he was 17, he gunned down a state trooper in Lafayette, Louisiana.
-- Despite protests from the American Civil Liberties Union and other abolitionist groups, Prejean was finally executed for the second murder on May 18, 1990.
•Ted Bundy
-- Serial killer murdered many women starting in 1974. There is no speculation as to how many women he killed. Anywhere between 30 and 40 is what he claimed.
-- Captured August 16, 1974. Found guilty of aggrevated kidnapping and attempted murder, and was to go for psychiatric exams.
--June 7, 1977: Bundy escaped. Headed to Florida State University campus.
--January 14, 1978: Bundy murdered two women and gravely injured two more at the Chi Omega sorority house. Days later, Bundy's last victim was 12 year old Kimberly Leach. He left her body to decompose in an abandoned hog shed.
-- Bundy was recaptured on February 15, the jury convicted Bundy on two counts of first-degree murder in the Chi Omega sorority slayings. He got another death sentence for the murder of 12 year old Kimberly Leach. Bundy was taken to death row. Bundy's confessions finally came out, and left everyone in disgust. He talked about clubbing his victims to death, sexually violating them and strangling them.
-- Bundy was electrocuted in February 1989
On March 17, 1971, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover told a congressional subcommittee that 19 of the killers responsible for the murder of policemen during the 1960s had been previously convicted of murder.
Blatant lie. Lawyers (both prosecution and defense) are allowed, and encouraged in law school, to LIE IN COURT. They are not under oath and pride themselves on doing what ever it takes to win. The Rolando Cruz came down to the fact that the prosecution thought their duty was to do whatever it takes to win. The defense has the same mission: win by any means necessary So the bigger problem is not the obviously crooked George Ryan. Rather, it is the self-righteous, indignant abusers of the system, Jim Ryan, Dick Daley, Dershowitz, Cochran.
Your Commission lacked the guts to mention that the problem is the lawyers.
Witnesses are sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I have been a witness in both civil and criminal cases where I was instructed to not tell the truth. I served on juries (not murder) where the witnesses were not allowed to tell the whole truth. One doctor told it anyway and was reprimanded by both his own attorney, the other side's attorney, and the judge that he would be held in contempt if he said anything the lawyers did not want to hear.
When George Ryan had a program promoting organ donation. Did he use that for cynical political purposes and money in his pocket? Oops, bad example.
Well then, I'm sure his campaign to get drunk drivers off the roads was sincere. That it was cynically used to raise the price of a bribe that put money in what has now become his legal defense fund.... Oops, let's try another example.
He revitalized the inner city of Joliet by having the taxpayers lease a building there. Do you hold it against him that he personally benefitted financially from this?
PR stunt? Where is the pattern that he would abuse the public trust for his own personal interest?
sarcasm
ATTORNEYS LIE they encourage their witnesses to lie and more often, to withhold the truth. I have been directly instructed by attorneys on both sides to lie under oath. I have witnessed many cases where a friend waiting in the hall was advised to lie. I have seen many cases where a witness was not called to testify by the lawyer because the lawyer was afraid he would tell the truth... and the lawyer openly stated that was why he was not called. These cases have involved both lay and professional witnesses. I have seen cases where a police officer, caught in a lie that was metaphysically impossible, changed his story and told the truth, and the judge threatened him with contempt unless he persisted in the absurd lie. My observations have been mostly in Cook Co IL but also in 10+ other Illinois counties.
Police work within this framework of a corrupt system of corrupt lawyers.
THE COMMISSION REFUSED TO EVEN LOOK AT THE TRUTH. MEMBERS AND STAFF WERE SELECTED WITH A NARROW PRE-SET BIAS THAT FAVORED THE LAWYERS.
The parallel discussion on here about statistics is true and good. But it does not get to the fact that the system is broke.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.