Meet the red-state conservatives fighting to abolish the death penalty

WASH POST ^ | 6/3/16 | Marin Cogan

[5150 FREEPER]

Colby Coash can point to the moment his evolution in thinking about the death penalty began.

It was Sept. 3, 1994, and Coash — now a conservative senator in the Nebraska legislature but then a freshman at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln — decided to go with some friends to the state penitentiary. Willie Otey, convicted of first-degree murder, was set to be executed at midnight, and people were gathering in the parking lot outside. Coash can still remember the scene: the live band, the grilling meat, the revelers popping cans of beer and chanting, “Fry him!”

“You wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference between the parking lot of the penitentiary and a tailgate. It was pretty ugly,” Coash says now. Even though he went to the event as a supporter of capital punishment, he says, “it kind of changed my heart. I thought, ‘I don’t want to be a part of state-sponsored killing.’ ”

[5150 FREEPER]

The main reason I support this effort:

"To help reach pro-death-penalty Republican voters, anti-death-penalty conservatives are turning to people who can speak in ways conservatives might identify with, even if these advocates aren’t, themselves, conservative — such as Christy Sheppard, a counselor from Ada, Okla., whose cousin, Debra Carter, was murdered in 1982. A few months ago, Sheppard traveled to Nebraska to tell the story of what happened after her cousin’s death. Five years after the slaying, police arrested two men, Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz, and charged them with murder. Fritz received life in prison; Williamson was sentenced to death. For years the family was satisfied, even happy with the outcome — until DNA testing 11 years later proved that both men were innocent. The man eventually found guilty in Carter’s death, Glen Gore, was already in prison on other charges by the time a DNA test identified him. He walked away from a work crew after learning that he was a suspect in the 1982 murder but turned himself in a week later. He was convicted in 2006."

Would rather a thousand people convicted of murder languish in prison than to put to death one innocent person.

[PGalt]

Justice is not a penalty and best administered by the intended victim at the time of attack whenever possible.

[glock rocks]

Ted Bundy will never harm another female. Guaranteed.

[BobL]

How many articles have been run about liberal, former Death Penalty opponents, now FAVORING THE DEATH PENALTY.

I’m sure there are many of them, for many reasons, but this give people a taste of the media bias - they will only report conversions to Death Penalty opponents.

[Rapscallion]

Real conservatives do not oppose the death penalty. They know many crimes are so horrible that death of the perp is deserved. In addition, the death penalty reduces the number of serious criminals who commit terrible crimes against others and against society. We are better as a society without them.

[Vigilanteman]

Any fan of Hawaii Five-O and Blue Bloods ought to understand why a death penalty is necessary. These creeps order murder from inside prison and occasionally even escape to do more. They do so secure in the knowledge that the states of Hawaii and New York can do nothing more than imprison them if caught, so they can be just as evil as they wish.

Those who make the argument "Would rather a thousand people convicted of murder languish in prison than to put to death one innocent person" ignore the reality that hundreds or even thousands more of innocents die when evil murderers are secure in the knowledge that they will never pay the ultimate price for their foul deed.

It is not logical to address the very rare (and, with the discovery of DNA, even rarer) injustice of one not guilty person paying the ultimate price by sanctioning the creation of hundreds or even thousands of new victims.

[Wyrd bið ful aræd]

Sorry, but when I see look at some of the heinous crimes committed, I refuse to accept that the best solution is to continue to let the perpetrator continue to pollute the earth. The punishment should match the crime.

And allow me to preempt what I hear constantly from fellow Catholics (not usually on this site), "If you're against abortion, it's cognitive dissonance to support the use of the death penalty..." No. The unborn are guilty of no personal crime, whereas the people I support being strapped into old sparky have all committed brutal crimes.

[Twinkie]

The “state” authorities are ordained by the Lord to punish
(even by executing) the evildoers in a society. In this
way, the earth is cleansed of those canker sores.

Yes. I agree with the Lord & also with St. Paul on this
matter. That’s why the lawyers don’t likely want me on
the jury in their murder trials.

[BobL]

What the left has been doing, very quietly, is infiltrating churches, to get their ideology imposed under the radar, one on one with policy makers and church leaders. Examples include things like “fighting global warming” since we are “stewards of the Earth”, and supporting Amnesty and mass immigration, since we need to help “people in need”. They’re also doing it with “prison sentencing reform” and, here, the Death Penalty.

Sadly, our side seems TOTALLY INCAPABLE of believing these tactics exist.

They never stop...and always find new ways to push their agenda, even if it means attending church and pretending to be Christians.

[Bernard]

Just to provide some context for this guy's first contact with the death penalty, here's a little information about why Willie Otey received the death penalty:

In 1978, Mr. Otey was convicted of the murder of a 26-year-old Nebraska woman, largely on the basis of his graphic description of how he had stabbed and smothered her and then hit her a few times with a hammer just to be sure she was dead. Later he said the confession had been coerced, but his volunteer lawyer, who is at the center of tonight's account, does not take that tack. Granting that his client might have done the deed, Victor Covalt argues that Mr. Otey should live because in his years on death row he studied philosophy and wrote poetry and was now a different man from the one who murdered Jane McManus.

[HomerBohn]

And allow me to preempt what I hear constantly from fellow Catholics (not usually on this site),...

Here's a Catholic who is frequently on this site.

However, I am a traditional Roman Catholic who attends mass at a traditional Roman Catholic Church where only the Tridentine Mass is said. (I am also a sedevacantist).

I AM FOR THE DEATH PENALTY AND FOR EXPANSION OF IT.

Warehousing perverts, rapists, drug dealers, murderers, etc. is just plain stupid. Why allow them a retirement with meals, television, perversion and recreation when it would be justified to end their lives and speed them on to their final judgment?

[rstrahan]

If you are dead sure about the guilt and the crime merited the death penalty (Ted Bundy, etc), that is one thing. But we are finding convictions for murder and having the death penalty that were based on bad forensics (bite marks), falsified facts (jail house stories from other inmates) hiding evidence from the defense (other confessions, etc) and just bad defense lawyers.

Since the death penalty cannot be undone once carried out, it should be seldom used and only for the worst of the worst.

[fulltlt]

A case that was in the news recently in the Chicago area:

http://patch.com/illinois/joliet/breaking-2-time-loser-drew-peterson-guilty-again-0
...
A jury in Downstate Chester needed only an hour to find Peterson guilty of planning the death of Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow from behind the walls of Menard Correctional Center.

[Yogafist]

Locking someone in a cell for the rest for the rest of their lives, 50 years or more, is not humane. And it has been well established there is no such thing as life in prison. Manson follower, Van houten, who was sentenced to death but commuted to “life in prison” after the California Supreme Court threw out the death penalty, was just granted parole by the parole board. She is only 66, still young by today’s standards. And if they don’t want to just wait it out, they can pitch their cause to one of the the “human rights” groups to start fighting for their release claiming any number of bleeding heart issues.

[Paradox]

I turned against the death penalty several years ago, I have seen many Freepers say the same thing. It has NOTHING to do with my compassion for the criminal, in my perfect world, any murderer would be killed (perhaps by his potential victim) right befor he did the deed. My concern is with meting out an irreversible punishment in a system of imperfect justice.

So there are a few "real conservatives" who have a problem with it.

[Nifster]

With no death penalty you declare open season on the guards inside. There are no consequences for a lifer deciding to off a guard

[JBW1949]

With the knowledge of DNA and the strict rules of evidence today, this is history...

If convicted of first degree murder, then the death penalty is acceptable...

[polymuser]

Yes, sloppy ‘justice’ is the problem with this.
Those caught doing such sloppy work, should be punished similar to the one falsely punished.

[RedWulf]

Pro criminal republicans are traitors.

[Yashcheritsiy]

“You wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference between the parking lot of the penitentiary and a tailgate. It was pretty ugly,” Coash says now. Even though he went to the event as a supporter of capital punishment, he says, “it kind of changed my heart. I thought, ‘I don’t want to be a part of state-sponsored killing.’ ”

So essentially, his opposition to the death penalty is based on a childish emotional response.