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Jury nullification to the extreme. Every one of these killers was convicted by a jury that tortured over its decision. This crooked politician has just pissed on these people and the families of the victims, just so he can feel good about himself.

Let's hope that at least one of those pardoned and freed moves in next door to george ryan.

So the crook granted clemency to the crooks? This guy is a disgrace to the Republican party. He kind of reminds of Clinton with his last minute pardons!

DOES HE HAVE THE NERVE TO EMPTY THE"DEATH ROW"STANDING IN LINE OUTSIDE THE ABORTION CLINICS???

Ping.

To McAdams, the debate over deterrence is unnecessary. ''If you execute a murderer and it stops other murders, you've saved innocent lives,'' he says.

Thomas Silverstein, while serving a life sentence, has murdered a correctional officer and three other inmates. Clay Fountain murdered his Marine sergeant, got life, and since has also murdered a correctional officer and three fellow inmates.

Executions benefit all of us.

More about Silverstein and Fountain

America's Fifth Column ... watch Steve Emerson/PBS documentary JIHAD! In America
New Link: Download 8 Mb zip file here (60 minute video)

Who is Steve Emerson?

Its been all over the news today. This is something I agree with Blago, about blanket decisions. Ryan should be charged with accessory to vehicular homicide if there is such a charge. He is about to be indicted himself and CNN is making him out to be some kind of saint. At one point they even indicated at the bottom of the screen that Ryan is a democrat. I thought that was damn funny. Its what we've all suspected anyway.

I am a paralegal who served as a staff member for the Death Penalty Commission here in Illinois. We worked long and hard to ensure that in the future, death penalty cases will be handled with all the precision and skill they require.

When Ryan imposed his moratorium on the death penalty, 12 Death Row inmates had been executed in the years since the death penalty was reinstated in 1973. But 13 had been set free by the appellate courts or had their sentences reduced to life in prison.

This is an accuracy rate of 48%. It would be unacceptable in traffic court. In death penalty cases, it was nothing less than an abomination.

We had cases in which defense counsel was laughably incompetent, including one who actually fell asleep during the trial. We had cases in which prosecutors and police were actually using the death penalty system to frame and murder an innocent man named Rolando Cruz.

I strongly believe in the death penalty, but it must be administered fairly, with competence and precision. We must never allow the Rolando Cruz case to be repeated. Nor can we ever allow an innocent man to be executed.

Ryan's decision here goes much too far, however. He is just another corrupt politician, like Bill Clinton, trying to make a name for himself and leave a lasting legacy in his final days in office.

Then there are those that are guilty,plea bargin, gain parole and WILL kill again. This is all a no win situation!

Innocent people could be executed.

But they have no problem with keeping an "innocent" person in prison for the rest of their life?

If any single one of these individuals kills again, Ryan should be charged as an accessory. He alone made it possible.

MURDERS THAT COULD HAVE BEEN AVERTED BY EXECUTION:
A sample of the murderers freed to kill again after receiving a "Life" sentence

•Charles Fitzgerald
--Killed a deputy sheriff and was given a 100-year prison sentence as a result.
--Reeased after serving just 11 years.
--Then murdered a California policeman.
--Given "life" for that killing.
--Paroled again in 1971.

• "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.