WHY WE LIKE THE DEATH PENALTY: Serial Killer Derrick Todd Lee Is Now Selling Crappy Paintings Online
WHY WE LIKE THE DEATH PENALTY: Serial Killer Derrick Todd Lee Is Now Selling Crappy Paintings Online – Baton Rouge Advocate
The Writer
This post was written by MacAoidh on Monday, January 30, 2012, 9:04. MacAoidh has written 8079 posts on this blog.
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Quote of the day
Quote Of The Day, May 25, 2012
“What happened here was the accumulated karmic backlash of forty years’ worth of Establishment Democrats telling the Activist Left that they were the vanguard of, and spokesmen for, a broad American populist movement. For the longest time, such lies were simply an accepted part of the public policy debate; mostly because the country had no yardstick by which to judge the Left’s turnout and activities.“But then came the Tea Parties — which showed people what a real American populist movement looks like, and what it can do — and its success stung the Activist Left at the exact moment that Scott Walker came along and not unreasonably decided that if he was elected on a platform of doing certain things, he had best start doing them. This infuriated the Left, but not as much as the refusal of Walker and the WI GOP to go weak-kneed at the first sign of push-back. So… the recall movement was born!
“And… fizzled. The Left should have cut their losses when Prosser demonstrated that drum circles and illegal indoor camping in the Rotunda didn’t translate into votes… and they definitely should have cut their losses when the first wave of recalls didn’t live up to the hype. But they didn’t, and now the people of Wisconsin are increasingly demonstrating that they’re tired of all of this – and they’re not blaming the Republicans, either. Such a shame, but that’s what you get whe- hey! The bacon’s fully cooked.”
- Moe Lane
I believe the death penalty to be a useful tool for law enforcement. Think how many admissions of guilt are obtained by taking this possibility off the table. I also believe it is the only appropriate punishment for some crimes and that some people are dangerous in any venue. Even in jail, they are a threat to their fellow inmates, to those who must guard them, and potentially even to visitors to the prison. A female guard was killed in Monroe in January 2011 and another in Washington State in the same month. What about those states where the death penalty doesn’t apply? Reoffending within the prison or after escaping carries no real-life penalty. If you have multiple life sentences without parole, what’s another?
In my experience, the death penalty is costly and lengthy because archaic rules apply. The answer is to amend the rules. These laws were developed in pre-forensic science times and they have come to be dysfunctional with current knowledge. There is no logical reason to have post-conviction relief (the extra set of both state and federal appeals offered to offenders convicted of capital murder) for a capital DNA case. That level of appeals is what takes the years and balloons the cost. The Innocence Project, rightly, can exonerate a wrongly convicted person immediately. Forensics should have the same power to convict and to enforce the timely imposition of a legal sentence. Amend the system to be congruent with science, and I believe those arguments will vanish for forensically supported cases.
I believe the death penalty should be used sparingly for heinous, forensically supported crimes. In these cases, I truly believe that our foremost responsibility is to insure our own safety and that of our children and our communities. It is difficult for me to believe that life or even life without parole will ever really mean that. If you recall, a life sentence once translated into about seven years of actual time served – or, you could even be lucky enough to work at the governor’s mansion. I understand the man to be executed today (Thursday, March 22, 2012) was on parole for one murder when he committed another.
The death penalty is a terrible, practical solution to a lethal problem. It is not appealing to the idealist nor to me, who am not an idealist. I simply see it as the only certain safety from a lethal offender.