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Death Penalty Ruled Unconstitutional
W Post ^

Posted on 09/24/2002 12:58:43 PM PDT by wallcrawlr

MONTPELIER, Vt. –– A federal judge declared the federal death penalty unconstitutional Tuesday in the second such ruling in less than three months.

U.S. District Judge William Sessions said the law does not adequately protect defendants' rights.

"If the death penalty is to be part of our system of justice, due process of law and the fair trial guarantees of the Sixth Amendment require that standards and safeguards governing the kinds of evidence juries may consider must be rigorous, and constitutional rights and liberties scrupulously protected," he said.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Breaking News; Crime/Corruption; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: radicalleft
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To: Burkeman1
It will be stayed pending appeal by the U.S. Attorney, and then reversed when the Circuit Court of Appeal gets to it.
81 posted on 09/24/2002 3:14:13 PM PDT by Thud
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To: wallcrawlr
What The FReep!???? Does this guy have his face screwed into a sewere drain?

prisoner6

82 posted on 09/24/2002 3:36:16 PM PDT by prisoner6
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To: Burkeman1; All
Whoah ! Wait a minute.

Has anybody actually read the text of the Federal death Penalty statute?

Does it strike anybody as odd that McVeigh is already long dead for his horrible crimes---committed in 1995? That is unprecedentadly swift justice. In a case of extreme significance to our current international struggle. There are many henious criminals who wait decades for the end while States go through a tortuous due process. But the Feds dispatched McVeigg in record time.

In the wake of Oklahoma city, after Clinton declared on National TV that Americans were going to have to grow up and give up some of their liberties for greater security, the Congress approved a tidal wave of new categories for the Federal Death penalty; most were intended to safeguard the Federal bureacracy!! And some merely reflected the current Ruling Elite's tender sensibilities about who is more hateful than the average killer.

An individual defending himself against a State prosecution is an overwhelming prospect. The Federal Government is a thousand times more powerful than any State and has limitless resources and limitless malice towards certain pariah groups.

The Judge wrote: "...the law does not adequately protect defendants' rights...."

I'll bet dollars to donuts he's right.

But why am I defending a mere individual against the leviathin state on this "constitution-loving" forum?

83 posted on 09/24/2002 3:36:34 PM PDT by LaBelleDameSansMerci
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To: chriservative
but thou shall not kill means exactly that. I had a hard time converting to that ideology,

You should annul that conversion as it was based on false information. It is "Thou shalt not Murder." Ask any Rabbi. It was also followed by a list of things where the death penalty both would and should be imposed by God's direct command.

a.cricket

84 posted on 09/24/2002 4:07:07 PM PDT by another cricket
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To: princess leah
Screw off. You forget that much of Florida is staunchly conservative. Don't think that West Fort Palmiami Beach is representative of the State as a whole.
85 posted on 09/24/2002 4:12:57 PM PDT by dinodino
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To: Southack; All
But a Senate majority of Democrats isn't going to do that...

True, but this only scratches the surface. The point here is that the law, no matter how it is written, says what the judge says.

You could have the most conservative Prez, 435 conservative Congressmen, and 100 conservative Senators, yet if you have judicial Leftist activists writing law from the bench it wouldn't make that much of a difference.

Even if we were to amend the Constitution to where justices no longer sit for life, ex post facto law stated in Article I, Section 8 takes precedence so those Leftist justices will remain on the bench until they either step down or pass away.

Impeaching justices? Yeah, if they commit an impeachable offense (Article I, Sections 2 & 3). They sit to give their judgement, so no matter how looney a ruling is, they've committed no impeachable offense for simply giving a ruling. They, too, must commit a "high crime or misdemeanor" to get the hook.

The way I see it, the lesson to be learned for conservatives is to do all that is possible to ensure that the Senate does not fall into the hands of the Left.

86 posted on 09/24/2002 4:14:32 PM PDT by rdb3
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To: LaBelleDameSansMerci
Good catch on the common sense meter. It isn't at first apparent that this is the Federal statute. Rule of law has to apply fairly.
87 posted on 09/24/2002 4:15:35 PM PDT by Thebaddog
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To: watchin
The judge in this case should be impeached and removed from the bench ... and executed.

"What are you doing with that rope? What?!? Hang me?!? But... but... I told you it was unconstitutional... Stop! No! I SAID IT'S UNCONSTITAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRGGGGLLLLLLL..."

88 posted on 09/24/2002 4:25:51 PM PDT by Chad Fairbanks
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To: wallcrawlr
At least both the judges who have made this ruling are in the Second Circuit. So one decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit can reverse both.
89 posted on 09/24/2002 4:28:46 PM PDT by aristeides
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To: Huck
The Feds never should have been so onvolved in criminal penalties anyway. Leave it to the states, and officiate on their compliance with the US Constitution.

Exactly. If they HAD stuck to their jurisdiction, namely maritime law, military justice, federal buildings and the District of Columbia, I don't think a federal judge sitting in Vermont would have overturned the FEDERAL death penalty. Concerning civilians outside of the normal jurisdiction of the federal government, the only federal offense resulting in the death penalty should be the crime of treason.

Imposing the death penalty over other offences as if they are supposed to be a super state with police powers isn't just scary, it's unconstitutional.

90 posted on 09/24/2002 4:31:45 PM PDT by FormerLurker
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To: wallcrawlr
U.S. District Judge William Sessions right from the U.N
91 posted on 09/24/2002 5:04:59 PM PDT by USA21
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To: wallcrawlr
Punishment and burden of proof should not be linked.

A judge may rule that the death penalty is "cruel and unusual punishment", although the methods of execution at the time those word were written were not ruled as such.

92 posted on 09/24/2002 5:07:13 PM PDT by weegee
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To: wallcrawlr
Alright, I took a nap this afternoon. Did I miss something? Did we join the EU? Algore is now president?
93 posted on 09/24/2002 5:11:50 PM PDT by Sub-Driver
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To: DoughtyOne
The dangerous thing to remember is that Manson was on death row. His death sentence ended when the death penalty was temporarily ended. He comes up for parole now and then.

Imagine all of the murderers on death row getting life with parole sentences.

Think of all of the expense trying to keep them in prison when they go before the parole board in addition to trying to get their convictions overturned.

94 posted on 09/24/2002 5:12:23 PM PDT by weegee
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To: Theodore R.
those people in IA -- it must be tough as nails to cast a ballot for that awful Dr. Ganske.

I have to admit I don't know much about Dr. Ganske.

95 posted on 09/24/2002 5:15:10 PM PDT by Texas Mom
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To: DoughtyOne
constitutional rights and liberties scrupulously protected

Isn't this more important than if a thousand Mansons die now or suffer a life of total loss of freedom in largley barbaric conditions?

96 posted on 09/24/2002 5:18:50 PM PDT by thepitts
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To: DoughtyOne
Thanks to idiots like him we have Charles Manson, Sirhan Sirhan, a number of Manson diciples and others in prison today, coming up for parole hearings ever few years.

Whenever the name Sirhan Sirhan comes up, it reminds me of a time in the late eighties I was working alongside a black Muslim woman who seemed to be nice, normal, and proper. Sirhan had just started campaigning for parole, and when he came up in an office conversation, she sighed, "He's done enough time...why don't they just let that man go home?"

I blew a gasket -- one of the few times I have done so in an office setting, even in an room full of liberals. I told her I couldn't believe she had sympathy for a man who killed a Senator and presidential candidate, and said in no uncertain terms that he was lucky to be alive not only now, but seconds after he fired those shots.

Our relationship was strained after that, but I didn't feel guilty about it one bit. She asked for it, and so did Sirhan. Unfortunately, Sirhan didn't get it.

97 posted on 09/24/2002 5:25:46 PM PDT by L.N. Smithee
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To: wallcrawlr
Well that makes abortion illegal then!
98 posted on 09/24/2002 5:47:17 PM PDT by buffyt
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To: wallcrawlr
THIS IS THE HEADLINE I PREFER TO SEE

(Tx) Man Executed for Killing Two Girls

Posted on 09/24/2002 5:21 PM Pacific by Dallas

HOUSTON --

A man was executed by injection Tuesday for fatally stabbing two Houston-area girls in 1992 after they refused to turn down some loud music. Rex Mays, 42, was convicted of killing Kynara Carreiro, 7, and her 10-year-old friend, Kristin Wiley, at the Wiley home next door to his house.

"I'm ready to go," he said in his final statement. "I'm going to a better place. I'm just mad for one reason: I'm going to a better place, and y'all have to go through this hell on earth." Mays confessed to the crime, saying he used knife skills he learned as a Marine. Kynara was stabbed and slashed 23 times and Kristin at least 18.

Mays, who occasionally earned money performing as Uh-Oh the Clown and dressed as Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, killed the girls the same day he was fired from a low-level warehouse job. Mays told police he stopped outside the Wiley home, then followed the blaring music to a bedroom. Kristin refused his request to turn down the volume. "Here I had just gotten fired and some kid's telling me, 'No,'" he said in the confession. He went to the kitchen, the girls behind him telling him to leave.

"It was just like something came over me," he said, explaining how he grabbed a knife and turned toward the children, who screamed and ran to a bedroom. He followed and killed them, "still feeling badly about how my day had gone." Mays is the 800th prisoner executed since the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976 allowed capital punishment to resume. He is the 283rd overall in Texas, which leads the nation by far in executions. And we are quite proud of that!!!!

99 posted on 09/24/2002 5:51:09 PM PDT by buffyt
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To: wallcrawlr
The can go to court post-humorously.
100 posted on 09/24/2002 6:05:44 PM PDT by Consort
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