DEATH ROW--death penalty in America

[Duchess]

I don't know if I could be okay mentally if my job were to put people to death. Regardless of how despicable someone was I think it would have the power to affect me in a negative way.

[BigMark]

Pretend they are a gigantic spider.

[Duchess]

Kill 'em with fire!

[SIXFOOTERsez]

See? Its all a matter of how you look at it

[Carsman]

h


Civilized people "Kill them with Kindness"!

[HairOfTheDog]

OHIO

Meet Alva Campbell. He's scheduled to be executed in Ohio tomorrow.


^ Campbell in 1997


^ Campbell today, age 69

Campbell was regularly beaten, sexually abused and tortured as a child, his attorneys have argued.

In 1997, five years after being serving 20 years for killing a man, Campbell was faking paralysis in a wheelchair when he overpowered a sheriff's deputy, stole his gun, and carjacked 18-year-old Charles Dials.

(continued)

[HairOfTheDog]

Charles Dials ^ was shot to death by Campbell in his own car. Campbell was trying to avoid being arrested on several charges of armed robbery.

Ohio Governor John Kasich denied Campbell's request for mercy on grounds that he's severely ill, it's difficult for medical professionals to find a vein to inject, and it's uncomfortable for him to lie down straight. However, officials did agree to give him a pillow.

Campbell requested to be killed by firing squad instead of lethal injection (probably an optics-driven strategy pushed by anti-death penalty groups, in my opinion). That request was also denied.

Story: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...ution.html

[username]

I have NO sympathy for these prisoners and I'd be just as happy if they were stripped of all their constitutional rights in a death row prison. Forced labor, no outside contact...I don't care. But as I said, stick them in a "special" (like Guantanamo) prison just for the worst of the worst and forget all this effort/money we spend housing and in the legal system trying to get one or two out of 100's actually executed.

If one can take the emotion out of it, monetarily it's not worth it to try to put them to death. And studies have shown it doesn't work to discourage others so that's no reason to maintain it.

Besides all the effort put in to getting one guy dead...I'm not sure if we look more weak or barbaric. It isn't worth it.

[HairOfTheDog]

Yeah, I agree with you user. I'd like to see the death penalty abolished on a national level at this point too.

Put the criminals convicted of capital crimes in the worst prison units and work them hard -- that suggestion works for me.

Prosecuting capital/death penalty cases takes much longer. It's also much more expensive to tax payers. Plus, the automatic appeals processes associated with death penalty sentences adds even more tax payer expense.

Aside from the financial drawbacks, as you noted, the death penalty isn't a deterrent to murderous criminals. AND, perhaps the biggest drawback for me......juries and judges sometimes make mistakes that come to light years down the line. The government can free prisoners (and compensate them when appropriate) if they're locked up for crimes they didn't commit, but obviously not if the government has already executed them.

For now.........it does seem that juries are less apt to dole out death as punishment, mostly reserving that sentence for aggravated murders where there is no doubt or very slim doubt that the defendant is guilty. That's probably the one positive impact of the CSI effect -- if there's no verified confession, no incriminating suspect DNA, no video tape of the crime......juries seem to be less inclined than they once were to condemn convicts to death.

[Carsman]

That's whys the defense attorneys try to make damn sure the jurors they pick for their jury do not have the mind set: You kill me, mine kill you!

To them, the "Deterrent factor" is secondary, they just want an Eye for an Eye justice! Those jurors are quickly dismissed.

(I was called for jury duty many more times then I wanted)

[Maggot]

The Jury should all be given a shotgun and they all go out in the yard and blow the head off of whoever accepts the death penalty as a sentence. In front of the media cameras of coarse, as a deterrent. Some people don't deserve the skin that holds their guts in. Some people just can't be reached.

[BigMark]

That's awful course.

[Maggot]

That's awful course.

Yeah, you're right............. so maybe do it on a golf course. corps, corpse, corpse.........

[Duchess]

Some people are monsters in every sense of the word.

[Donovan]

As liberal as I am in most areas, there is a part of me wishes they'd start executing convicted violent murderers in a manner befitting the original crime. Shot somebody? Be ready for a bullet. Hacked them up? Here comes the table saw. Yeah I know it's barbaric. But every time I see one of these predatory murderers I see the face of some poor soul who died terrified and alone, while this prick gets to lie down with a nice pillow and go to sleep.

[HairOfTheDog]

As liberal as I am in most areas, there is a part of me wishes they'd start executing convicted violent murderers in a manner befitting the original crime. Shot somebody? Be ready for a bullet. Hacked them up? Here comes the table saw. Yeah I know it's barbaric. But every time I see one of these predatory murderers I see the face of some poor soul who died terrified and alone, while this prick gets to lie down with a nice pillow and go to sleep.

I fantasize about that sometimes too and roll my eyes at the claim that lethal injection is a cruel and inhumane form of execution, considering how violently most of the victims were killed.

But, 'an eye or an eye' wouldn't bring any of their victims back, obviously, and there are so many drawbacks to the even more humane death penalties currently undertaken across much of the country.

More than 155 individuals have been exonerated from death row since 1973, and that's only the ones lucky enough to have had advocates and were released after being proven innocent. It's impossible to know how many more people were wrongly convicted of capital crimes.

But, if the rate of innocence in exonerations is applied to convicts who had their sentences reduced and those who have already been killed by the government.............it works out to over 4% or 120+ more according to the most in-depth analysis. http://time.com/79572/more-innocent-peop...ted-study/

I don't lose any sleep over the executions of death row convicts who we KNOW are guilty. But the other ones do bother me.

[HairOfTheDog]

Eric Scott Branch, 47, (left) was executed by lethal injection and pronounced dead at 7.05pm on Thursday at Florida State Prison after the court rejected his appeals without comment.

He was convicted of the rape and fatal beating of University of West Florida student 21-year-old Susan Morris (right) whose red Toyota he stole. Susan's naked body was found buried in a shallow grave near a nature trail.

Branch's last meal was a pork chop, T-bone steak, French fries and two pints of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, a Corrections Department spokeswoman said. Just after being injected, he screamed "murderers, murderers, murderers!"

(continued)

[HairOfTheDog]

Also yesterday in death row news:

-- Texas Governor Greg Abbott commuted Thomas Whitaker's (inset left) death sentence. He was sentenced to death for the murder of family members. His father appealed to the governor saying he forgave his son and would be in more pain if his son was executed. Gov Abbott commuted his sentence to life in prison without parole.

--The Supreme Court granted a brief stay for Doyle Lee Hamm (inset right) in Alabama, causing his execution to be postponed after the stay was lifted too close to the midnight deadline. Hamm was sentenced to death for the 1987 murder of Cullman motel clerk Patrick Cunningham during a robbery in which $410 was stolen. Cunningham was shot in the head.

Hamm's attorney argued that lymphoma and past drug use have damaged his veins too much for a lethal injection. Alabama prison officials say they plan to inject him through his leg veins.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...orida.html

[HairOfTheDog]

Tennessee

 

^ Billy Ray Irick raped, sodomized, and strangled to death seven-year-old ^ Paula Dyer in April 1985.  Rest in peace.

Tonight, the state of Tennessee is scheduled to execute him, the first execution there since 2009.

Tennessee limits last meal costs to $20.  Irick has selected a burger and onion rings as his last meal and the supplier is being withheld for safety reasons.

Irick's attorneys have delayed his execution for years.  His attorneys have filed a series of appeals through the decades, with claims of insanity and the unconstitutional use of the electric chair as a back-up to lethal injection.  

In July Irick's attorney asked for the Tennessee Supreme Court to delay his execution once again amid a challenge to the state's lethal injection protocol.

As covered upthread, Europe stopped selling the traditional death drugs to the U.S. several years back on moral grounds and it's made it challenging for states to carry out executions in a manner that would not be deemed 'cruel and unusual punishment'.

If Irick is executed tonight, it will the first time Tennessee has used the new death cocktail of midazolam sedative, the muscle relaxer vecuronium bromid, followed by potassium chloride to stop the heart.

Story:  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...-meal.html

[Midwest Spy]

What a prick.

Got 33 more years that poor innocent girl.

Her parents probably aren’t even alive to see justice meted out.

Either abolish capital punishment, or kill these fu**ers in a timely manner.