The Death Penalty Is an Affirmation of the Sanctity of Life LA Times
By MICHAEL D. BRADBURY
Ventura County District Attorney
"If we want to abolish the death penalty, let our friends the murderers take the first step."
--Alphonse Karr,
19th century French novelist* * * * * * * *
A 2 1/2-year-old girl was kidnapped, raped, sodomized, tortured and mutilated with vise grips over six hours. Then she was strangled to death. Her assailant, Theodore Frank, according to court records and his own admissions, had already molested more than 100 children during a 20-year period.
A sentence of death is the only appropriate punishment for such a serial assailant committing such an extraordinarily heinous crime. Two separate juries agreed, but now, 23 years after this horrendous murder, legal proceedings still continue in federal court.
As district attorney of Ventura County since 1978 and a prosecutor since 1967, I am convinced that there are some crimes that demand a sentence of death, despite recent publicity attacking the death penalty and calling for outright abolition or at least a "moratorium" until further studies are completed.
There have been 12 defendants sentenced to death in Ventura County while I have been district attorney. Their crimes included multiple murders and murders committed during the course of kidnappings and sexual assaults. These cases uniformly involve violent predators who attack the weakest, most defenseless members of our society. In one case, the defendant not only kidnapped and strangled the victim, but then committed a sex act on her dead body. In another case, an 8-year-old boy was kidnapped, sexually assaulted, strangled and then set on fire. In yet another horrific murder, an elderly husband and wife were bludgeoned in their own home during a robbery.
A decision to seek the death penalty is never made lightly. We thoroughly investigate both the crime and the defendant's background. I then make the final decision after considering the results of this exhaustive investigation and meeting with the assigned attorneys, investigators and other staff members. The defendant's attorneys are invited to appear at this meeting to present any information they consider relevant to the decision.
There will, of course, always be attacks on the death penalty. Some critics oppose it for moral or religious reasons, considerations that all persons have a right to decide for themselves. Other opponents claim "discriminatory enforcement"--that the death penalty is not imposed impartially among defendants of different races or backgrounds. More recently, capital punishment opponents have contended that seeking the death penalty means innocent people could be put to death. While I cannot claim to know every fact about the administration of the death penalty in other states, I would offer certain observations:
- There is a big difference between a case involving the exoneration of a defendant previously sentenced to death and one in which an innocent person is actually executed. The studies cited by death penalty opponents rely on cases where exoneration occurred before execution took place, not cases where any innocent people were actually executed. Thus, as one analyst commented, such studies appear to show that the most important error rate--innocent people who were actually executed--is zero.
- Death penalty opponents claim there are a great number of legal errors in death penalty trials. But all death verdicts are intensively reviewed by state and federal courts. The crucial issue is not whether such review ultimately discovers any technical error, but whether an alleged error in any way altered or prejudiced the ultimate jury verdict. That rarely occurs.
- Defendants charged with capital offenses in California receive high-quality representation. State law requires the provision of expert witnesses and investigator funds. Often, capital defendants retain leading experts in the scientific community to testify in their cases. Whenever a sentence of death is imposed, California law provides an automatic appeal to the state Supreme Court. At this stage, additional skilled and experienced attorneys are appointed to represent the defendant. If the state appeal is unsuccessful, another set of attorneys is appointed to take the case to federal court. These attorneys are given money for investigation and new experts.
- With the advent of DNA evidence, the chances of an innocent person being convicted and executed have been virtually eliminated in almost all cases where DNA evidence is available.
More than 130 years ago, the eminent philosopher John Stuart Mill spoke eloquently on this issue before the English Parliament: "Does fining a criminal show want of respect for property or imprisoning him, for personal freedom? Just as unreasonable is it to think that to take the life of a man who has taken that of another is to show want of regard for human life. We show, on the contrary, most emphatically our regard for it, by the adoption of a rule that he who violates that right in another forfeits it for himself."In our understandable desire to be fair and to protect the rights of offenders in our criminal justice system, let us never ignore or minimize the rights of their victims. The death penalty is a necessary tool that reaffirms the sanctity of human life while assuring that convicted killers will never again prey upon others.
Another Question for Those Against Capital Punishment
by StinkyPantz 75 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
-
ThiChi
-
proplog2
Stinky:
That's fine if you want to ask any question you want. Or start any thread you want. I am also against Simon locking topics.
I think if there is someone who is locked up for 1st degree murder and they want to murder people inside - then you do the same thing you do for people who want to kill themselves. Put them in a rubber room and keep them sedated. Maybe you would have to hand-cuff them. Perhaps a daily injection of depoprovera may neutralize some of the aggression.
The point is that the rare (rare?) person that just loves to kill has other problems. What would you say if your son murdered someone and was executed and a few months later geneticist discovered a biological defect that predisposes people to that kind of behavior and they developed a drug that would prevent it?
Again you haven't considered ALL of the options - even for the most "hardened" killer. And you insist on sticking to your two handled question that by its very structure discourages the consideration of other options.
It's kind of like the question "Have you stopped beating your wife?" Yes or No.
-
ThiChi
""What would you say if your son murdered someone and was executed and a few months later geneticist discovered a biological defect that predisposes people to that kind of behavior and they developed a drug that would prevent it? ""
Very extraneous reasoning. The reality is no such situation exists. Plus, it puts forth a fallacy that the killer is the victim.
-
proplog2
ThiChi:
YOU betray your narrow single option orientation and are therfore a "victim" of simplistic thinking.
it puts forth a fallacy that the killer is the victim.
The Killer is not THE victim. However he is A victim.
For the sake of your childish need for "closure" you choose to Kill someone who killed someone else. You pretend to know all the causes of a persons behavior. You don't and no one does.
-
ThiChi
Amazing! The only thing you offer is some abstract situation based on wishful thinking. And then you admit the killer is "a victim." Deplorable rubbish. It is not the cause that worries me, it is the effect that is substantial.
Murders That Could Have Been
Averted By Capital Punishment• Some 80 years ago, Charles Fitzgerald killed a deputy sheriff and was given a 100-year prison sentence as a result. He was released after serving just 11 years, and in 1926 murdered a California policeman. He was given "life" for that killing, but was paroled in 1971.
• In 1931, "Gypsy" Bob Harper, who had been convicted of murder, escaped from a Michigan prison and killed two persons. After being recaptured, he then killed the prison warden and his deputy.
• In 1936, former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover reported the case of a Florida prisoner who committed two murders, received clemency for each, and then murdered twice more. On March 17, 1971 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.
• In 1951, Joseph Taborsky was sentenced to death in Connecticut for murder, but was freed when the courts ruled that the chief witness against him (his brother) had been mentally incompetent to testify. In 1957, Taborsky was found guilty for another murder, for which he was electrocuted in May 1960. Before his execution, he confessed to the 1951 murder.
• In 1952, Allen Pruitt was arrested for the knife slaying of a newsstand operator and sentenced to life in prison. In 1965, he was charged with fatally stabbing a prison doctor and an assistant prison superintendent, but was found not guilty by reason of insanity. In 1968, his 1952 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. On December 31, 1971 he was arrested and charged in the murder of two men in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
• In 1957, Richard Biegenwald murdered a store owner during a robbery in New Jersey. He was convicted, but 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, after which he 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.
• A man convicted of murder in Oklahoma pleaded with the judge and jury to impose the death sentence, but was given life instead. He later killed a fellow inmate and was executed for the second killing in 1966.
• In 1972, Arthur James Julius was 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.
• In 1976, Jimmy Lee Gray (who was free on parole from an Arizona conviction for killing a 16-year-old high school girl) kidnapped, sodomized, and suffocated a three-year-old Mississippi girl. He was executed for that second killing on September 2, 1983.
• Also in 1976, Timothy Charles Palmes was on probation for an earlier manslaughter conviction 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. (The other accomplice, a woman, was granted immunity for testifying for the prosecution.)
• In 1978, Wayne Robert Felde, while being taken to jail in handcuffs, pulled a gun hidden in his pants and killed a policeman. At the time, he was a fugitive from a work release program in Maryland, where he had been convicted of manslaughter.
• In 1979, Donald Dillbeck was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison for murdering a Florida sheriffs deputy. 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.
• In 1981, author Norman Mailer and many other New York literati embraced convicted killer Jack Henry Abbott (who had murdered a fellow prison inmate) and succeeded in having him released early from a Utah prison. On 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.
• On October 22, 1983 at the federal penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, two prison guards were murdered in two separate instances by inmates who were both serving life terms for previously murdering inmates. On November 9, 1983 Associate U.S. Attorney General D. Lowell Jensen 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."
• On December 7, 1984 Benny Lee Chaffin kidnapped, raped, and murdered a 9-year-old Springfield, Oregon girl. He had been convicted of murder once before in Texas, but not executed. Incredibly, 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 society!
• Thomas Eugene Creech, who had been 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, killed a fellow prison inmate in 1981 and was sentenced to death. In 1986 his execution was stayed by a federal judge and has yet to be carried out.
• When he was 14, Dalton Prejean killed 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 executed for the second murder on May 18, 1990.
-
crownboy
I'm not against it in principle, but since the US justice system has a little problem with executing innocent people, at the very least a national moratorium ought to be held on the practice.
I guess I'd rather see 20 murders rot in jail for life than have one innocent person die needlessly. I say we should only use the death penalty when there is Tim Mc. Veigh like evidence for murder.
-
SheilaM
""What would you say if your son murdered someone and was executed and a few months later geneticist discovered a biological defect that predisposes people to that kind of behavior and they developed a drug that would prevent it? ""
As I stated before if my son murdered someone then I would be relieved knowing he would never perpetrate again. HE ALREADY Murdered the victim is still dead and I would have the knowledge he had paid for his crime.
-
StinkyPantz
First of all ditto, SheilaM's response.
Crownboy-
I'm not against it in principle, but since the US justice system has a little problem with executing innocent people
Please give me one case where a person was executed and then exonerated.I guess I'd rather see 20 murders rot in jail for life than have one innocent person die needlessly.
So would everyone else. The problem is that the average murderer only spends 6 years in jail.I say we should only use the death penalty when there is Tim Mc. Veigh like evidence for murder.
I've seen murder cases much stronger than the McVeigh case. Do you not know much about capital cases? Why do you think they often cost upwards of 1.5 to 2 million dollars? Part of the reason is because they are investigated thoroughly and appealed thoroughly. Nowadays they are scientifically investigated thoroughly with little margin for error. -
proplog2
Thi Chi:
Amazing! The only thing you offer is some abstract situation based on wishful thinking. And then you admit the killer is "a victim."
Once again you are showing your narrow mindedness. The fact is I offer nothing in this argument but a suggestion that you do more research on the subject. Your arguments have been hashed and rehashed on forums dedicated to this debate. I am not about to engage in a debate on this. The "only thing that I offered" is what I think is a significant area that is overlooked - genetic predisposition to crimnality - including murder.
By the way - The examples you gave don't prove the necessity of murdering murderers to keep them from murdering again. The examples illustrate the need to REALLY keep murderers in jail for life.
And I reassert, in the face of your ridicule (not rebuttal), that murderers are also victims.
I can understand why people want to murder the murderer. It is natural to retaliate against those who have done you harm. We are, after all, really animals. Killing was often the only solution where there was a conflict. Modern society doesn't have to kill criminals. We can afford to jail them. And I mean REALLY jail them.
As I said before there are millions of pages written on this subject. Have you gone to pages that are against capital punishment and personally tried to rebutt them?
-
ThiChi
""I'm not against it in principle, but since the US justice system has a little problem with executing innocent people, at the very least a national moratorium ought to be held on the practice. ""
Wow, no proof to back this up! And you won't find any.
PP: I change my statement not from wishful thinking to pure si-fi! You are a nut!