Posted on 01/12/2003 1:02:10 PM PST by kattracks
NEW YORK (AP) -- The Rev. Jesse Jackson said Sunday that Illinois Gov. George Ryan "did an awesome thing" in commuting the sentences of 167 death-row inmates.
"He chose to fight the death machine," Jackson said in a sermon at a Manhattan church. "He chose to end legal lynching."
Some 200 congregants at the Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village applauded as Jackson compared Ryan to Pontius Pilate, who he said could have commuted Jesus' death sentence.
Ryan's mass commutation on Saturday was the sharpest blow to capital punishment since the U.S. Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in 1972, forcing states to redraw their laws to make them more equitable.
Most of the 167 Illinois inmates will now serve life without parole.
Jackson, whose Rainbow/PUSH coalition is based in Chicago, was in New York for the group's annual Wall Street conference and made several public appearances throughout the city.
Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. For he is God's minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil.
--Romans 13:3-4
By the same token, however, having the death sentence "on the table" makes it possible to obtain those "life w/o parole" decisions.
Always the racial arsonist. Playing the race card as if only Blacks are subject to the death penalty.
Now wait a minute, I seem to remember the IRS chasing churches who engage in political activity, revoking their tax exampt status.
Black churches are exempt from this persecution I suppose?
Are you kidding? He couldn't care less about the Scriptures, nor does he want to know them. jackson is a fraud.
Shakedown Part Two!
Consider that it takes a murderer to know a murderer! Jesse's half brother Noah Robinson is in the Joint for murder!
So Pilate said to Him, "You do not speak to me? Do You not know that I have authority to release You, and I have authority to crucify You?" Jesus answered, "You would have no authority over Me, unless it had been given you from above. . . ."
--John 19:10-11
Jackson has a church?
Wisconsin doesn't have the death penalty. The guy who murdered my neighbor's kindergartener will be eligible for parole (this was prior to Wisconsin having the "life without parole" sentencing option) when he's 106 1/2. He got a lawyer for one shot at the appeals court & the state supremes. He lost, of course, and the state doesn't fund any federal appeals. I think of him every once in a while, but I never have to see his face. I don't have to hear about his wretched childhood ever again, or how he was on acid & coke when he killed her--at least not from his lawyers trying to make him into a sympathetic character. He's just sitting there & rotting until he dies--or lives until he's 106 1/2, his earliest release date. Would I feel any better if he was on death row or if he were executed? Not really. There's nothing that will ever bring that child back. Nothing will make that family whole again.
Click to scroll to commentary.
NY Times Uses “Big Lie” Technique To Advance Opposition To The Death Penalty
Toogood Reports ^ | 24 November 2002 | Nicholas Stix
Posted on 11/21/2002 8:37 PM PST by mrustow
Toogood Reports [Weekender, November 24, 2002; 12:01 a.m. EST]
URL: http://ToogoodReports.com/
In order to know what to expect from any "news story" or editorial in the New York Times on the death penalty, all you have to know is that the Sulzberger family, which owns the newspaper, and its editors, are unalterably opposed to capital punishment. The article will then follow the computer scientists' rule of GIGO: garbage in, garbage out. 'The death penalty is unjust, and must be abolished, or failing that, rendered practically inoperable.' Between the opening and the conclusion, the reader should expect to be abused via the withholding of essential details, and violations of logic. And so it is with the newspaper's Wednesday editorial, "Justice for Death Row," which calls on lame duck, Republican Illinois Governor George Ryan to commute to life the sentences of all of Illinois' ... death row inmates. The ellipsis is because the newspaper does not tell the reader how many inmates' sentences would be commuted, if the Timesmen had their way.
What the Times does tell us, is that 13 men who were on death row, including one who was two days away from a date with the death chamber, have been exonerated, and that Illinois has executed 12 prisoners since the state reinstated capital punishment in 1977. "That's more than the 12 people who were actually executed. The co-chairman of a blue-ribbon commission appointed to study the system noted that it was unlikely that any doctor 'could get it wrong over 50 percent of the time and still stay in business.'"
Those 13 exonerated men have names, and lives that are of value, independent of their function as political pawns for the New York Times and the anti-death penalty crowd. So, raise a glass out of respect to Joseph Burrows, Perry Cobb, Rolando Cruz, Gary Gauger, Alejandro Hernandez, Verneal Jimerson, Ronald Jones, Carl E. Lawson, Steve Manning, Anthony Porter, Darby Tillis, Steve Smith and Dennis Williams.
The bad news is, that the Times – along with the unnamed co-chairman – fibbed. The Times misrepresented capital punishment in Illinois as a situation in which a defendant in a capital case has a 52 percent chance (13 out of 25) of being wrongfully convicted and sentenced to die. The good news is, the true percentage of exonerated death row prisoners in Illinois is 7.5 percent. Public Information Officer Brian Fairchild of the Illinois Corrections Department told Toogood Reports, that 159 prisoners are currently on death row. Adding the 13 exonerated prisoners, that makes for 172 death sentences. In other words, Illinois gets it right not 48% of the time, as the Times portrays things, but 92.5% (159 out of 172) of the time. That is, to be sure, an imperfect record, but worlds apart from the Times' fiction. And the Times has not reported a single instance of a man being unjustly executed in the State of Illinois.
The Times' editorial board's dishonesty in reporting the Illinois death row numbers was but a prelude to its violation of logic, in calling on Gov. Ryan to commute the sentences of all prisoners on death row to life sentences.
"But last month's hearings, which received wide attention across the state, appear to have slowed the momentum. The testimony, much of it from families of murder victims, was often heart-wrenching. But as effective as they were as a reminder of the pain that crime causes, the hearings did not refute the fact that Illinois's use of the death penalty is tragically flawed. Governor Ryan, who has made fairness in administering the death penalty a hallmark of his governorship, will end his tenure on a high note if he takes one last stand for justice and issues a blanket commutation."
When other people's pain coincides with the Times' house politics, the Times' editors are less patronizing. Murder isn't just about "the pain that crime causes" (read: 'We feel your pain'), but is the ultimate injustice that one person can commit. The death penalty is about justice. The Times speaks of Gov. Ryan's maintaining of "fairness in administering the death penalty," but this is yet more double-talk. In English, "fairness in administering the death penalty" means ensuring that the accused gets a fair trial with competent counsel, and in the case of a conviction, the chance to appeal his sentence, and the opportunity, should new, exculpatory evidence or procedural errors be discovered after conviction, for his execution to be postponed while his case is reviewed. Conversely, on West 43rd Street, there is no such thing as "fairness in administering the death penalty"; "fairness" lies in the abolition or crippling of the death penalty.
Note too that for socialists, "fairness in administering the death penalty," is often a code for the illogical belief that, 'disproportionate numbers of blacks are condemned to death; thus the death penalty is unjust.' Human beings – whether as individuals or groups – do not act proportionately. The salient fact is not that disproportionate numbers of blacks are condemned to death, but rather that disproportionate numbers of blacks commit murder. What socialists are saying, ultimately, is that if enough blacks commit murder, then black murderers should get bonus points.
By calling for the commutation of all death sentences in Illinois, the Times editorial board blurs the distinction between those who were rightfully convicted, and those who were not, and ignores the facts in Illinois. The Times editorial board simply opposes the death penalty everywhere, the facts be damned. And here we must return to the editorial's misrepresentation of capital prosecutions in Illinois. For if the reader can be conned into believing that state prosecutors get death penalty cases wrong more often than they get them right, the proposal that capital punishment be shelved starts looking pretty reasonable.
The death penalty is serious business. When 13 men in one state alone are unjustly sentenced to die, even if that state's track record is over 92% correct, attention must be paid to death penalty critics – or at least, the honest ones. And the public deserves to hear serious arguments for and against the ultimate penalty. However, when zealots are willing to lie in order to end capital punishment, it just goes to show that they have not been paying attention.
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