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Today's Top News
US Executes Grandmother Despite Protests
JARRATT, Virginia - A US grandmother has been put to death by lethal injection in Virgina, the first woman executed in the state for nearly a century, prompting outrage from anti-death penalty campaigners.
An activist against the death penalty displays his sign outside Greensville prison in Jarratt, Virgina, just hours before the scheduled execution of Teresa Lewis, the first woman to be executed in southern Virginia in almost 100 years. (AFP/Edouard Guihaire) Teresa Lewis, 41, convicted of masterminding the murders of her husband and step-son, was pronounced dead at 9:13 pm Thursday (0113 GMT Friday) at Greensville prison, prison official Larry Traylor said.
Death penalty abolitionists had championed Lewis's case, insisting she had diminished mental faculties and that smarter accomplices had taken advantage of her.
"This execution means that the system is broken," Lewis's lawyer James Rocap said after the execution.
Jack Payden-Travers of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty described the execution as "legal homicide. Nothing more than a legal lynching."
Lewis, who had an IQ of about 70, "was calm, she seemed very resolute" as she walked into the death room, Taylor said. The press pool, however, said "she looked scared, nervous."
The US Supreme Court on Tuesday turned down Lewis's appeal for a stay of execution and Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, as he had previously signaled, did not intervene in the case.
Outside the prison, a group of about 30 opponents of the death penalty rang a bell and prayed as Lewis went to her death.
"What kind of people are we to execute someone like her?" cried campaigner Virginia Rovnyak.
"She didn't pull the trigger, and she was mentally challenged," she insisted to AFP.
Lewis is the first female prisoner executed in the southern state since 1912, when a 17-year-old black woman name Virginia Christian was sent to the electric chair.
She is only the 12th woman executed in the United States since the death penalty was resumed in 1976.
Despite her low IQ, Lewis was ruled fit for trial in Virginia. She pleaded guilty to hiring two men in 2002 to murder her husband and stepson so she could pocket their life insurance policy.
Lewis admits she left open the door of the family trailer in rural Pittsylvania County so her two young accomplices could enter and shoot her husband and his 25-year-old son.
All three pleaded guilty. The shooters got life in prison, but Lewis was sentenced to death, accused of being the mastermind of the killings.
Lewis's supporters question why she was sentenced to death when the two men who actually carried out the murder were handed life without parole.
This "is as good an example as you can find of someone who should not be put to death," Rocap told the National Law Journal before the execution.
"Teresa Lewis is a poster child for why the death penalty process is broken."
The criminal justice system is "so badly broken, it can not be saved from my view," Rocap told AFP.
Asked if the Lewis case could help to change things, he said: "I hope so."
Lewis, who had an adult son and stepdaughter -- Kathy Clifton, met her spiritual advisor and attorneys earlier Thursday and had a final meal of fried chicken, green peas with butter, chocolate cake, apple pie and a Dr Pepper soda, Taylor said.
"I just want Kathy to know I love her. And I'm very sorry," were Lewis's final words, according to the Virginia Department of Corrections.
Payden-Travers told AFP he had driven Lewis's 20-year-old son, Billy Bean, to Jarrett to meet with his mother.
"He is here to have a contact visit with her, to touch her and be touched by her, for the first time since she was arrested," he said.
Lewis met her two accomplices, Rodney Fuller and Matthew Shallenberger, in a Walmart superstore. Soon she began an affair with the 22-year-old Shallenberger.
Her lawyers had argued that new evidence, including her low IQ, had appeared since her trial and should prevent her execution.
The key piece of evidence they wanted considered was a letter from Shallenberger, who killed himself in jail in 2006, in which he claimed full responsibility for the murder plot and suggests he pushed Lewis into it.
Lewis's case made global headlines this week when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad contrasted the lack of opposition to her impending execution to the "storm" surrounding a woman sentenced to be stoned to death in Iran.
And the Council of Europe goodwill ambassador, Bianca Jagger, urged Governor McDonnell to halt the execution in an article on the online Huffington Post Thursday, saying the execution would be "a lasting shame on the American legal system."
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Show AllThe only method of execution that is acceptable is "death by old age" after a life in prison without parole. Even then, all evidence should be considered especially evidence coming to light after sentence has been passed. Too many innocent people are languishing in prison after being wrongly convicted, their only real "crime" being they are too poor to afford competent legal counsel. In this country, the inmates have taken over the asylum. The U.S. is a blood thirsty, self-aggrandising, and in denial of it's own crimes. There is little hope for a country such as ours. In history, none that has achieved our level of moral destitution has survived intact, thank God. I have a hard time living like this, but am not inclined to move to another country. I'll say this though, for those who excitedly await Jesus return, you'd better hope he takes his sweet time, cause I don't think you're gonna like his critique of your behavior in His name....just sayin
[The only method of execution that is acceptable is "death by old age" after a life in prison without parole. ]
Totally agree.
Nice. We should hope there isn't a hell because we're all going there if there is one.
Nice comment, Mr. twodogs.
Joe
I'm against the death penalty in all cases, but I'm bothered by the coverage of this execution. I'm sure a lot of the men on death row are grandfathers, and I'm also sure there are many of below-average intelligence.
Many, many more men are executed than women, and yet when women are executed, we make a far bigger deal of it. The death penalty is horrible, but gender has nothing to do with that.
pax September 24th, 2010 9:39 am -- Good point.
The arguments against the death penalty fall into two categories: those that contend it should be completely abolished, and those that contend it should be abolished for certain categories of convicted persons (minors, mentally ill, mentally retarded, people who didn't actually perform the murder, etc.). Because the battle in the U.S. for the time being is lost with regard to total abolition, opponents have to settle for arguments like those urged on Lewis's behalf.
I think it's worth stating, at every opportunity, the reasons for total abolition. Mine are primarily two: DNA evidence has confirmed that the chance of wrongful conviction in capital punishment cases, including those in which DNA evidence isn't a factor, is unacceptably great; and the death penalty offends the moral principle that values forgiveness. This latter argument makes special sense in the Lewis case, because although her guilt wasn't in doubt, she exhibited such remorse that it could have been reasonable to forgive her at some point. When someone who could earn forgiveness is killed, the opportunity for forgiveness is killed, too. It goes without saying that the duty we owe to persons who have earned forgiveness is to forgive them, not kill them. (Whether and when someone should be released from confinement are separate issues.)
Amen! Also, why should gender have anything to do with the so-called "punishment"?
Yup, look at the company the USAns keep!
A sad commentary on the US body politic, and the continuing emotional and social immaturity of same. Just once I would like to see a governor stand on his hind legs and declare that an impending execution be stopped because it was unjust. The state of Illinois declared a moratorium on executions, but this was perhaps partly due to extenuating political circumstances, to gain cover for an embattled governor.
Obviously there have been so many wrongful convictions in death penalty cases that the entire system should be scrapped.
"And the Council of Europe goodwill ambassador, Bianca Jagger, urged Governor McDonnell to halt the execution in an article on the online Huffington Post Thursday, saying the execution would be 'a lasting shame on the American legal system.'"
_______________________________
Apparently Bianca doesn't realize that in this age of glorious Imperial technobarbarism, the sociopathic Amerikan legal system is beyond "shame".
OK, Rant On:
The death penalty is wrong, immoral and just plain stupid on so many levels that it is hard to know where to start. First as a punishment it's pretty stupid. Once the person is dead his punishment is over. He/she feels nothing, experiences nothing, no more punishment.
Then of course you have the issue of executing an innocent person. If someone is wrongly imprisoned they can always be freed if they win an appeal, but once you execute someone there is obviously no way to appeal a false conviction.
Then there is the whole hypocrisy of punishing some one who murders someone, by murdering them. So by that reasoning if someone rapes someone then they should be raped as punishment? I wonder how rape chambers next to an execution chambers would be greeted by the Amerikan populace? (Seriously I'd like some feedback on that one. This country is so screwed up over sex I'm not sure which way it would go.)
Then of course if you are a god fearing, gay hating, bible thumping christian, there is this thing called a commandment that says god, him/her self says you shouldn't do it. But then again just because your one true all knowing god says you shouldn't do it, WTF does that god know anyway. Seriously, its just god telling us what we should do. No biggie there...
I love it when the right wing hypocrites that want the 10 commandments put on any public building, but you never hear them clamoring to put them up on an execution room wall. Imagine a public execution, with "Thou Shall Not Kill" emblazoned on a background wall for all to see as the condemned takes his last breath. That's another one I'd like to see the Amerikan public wrap its little brain around.
I used to think we had the death penalty because politicians wanted to "appear" to be "tough on crime". But unfortunately I think it goes MUCH deeper than that. I suspect these people who like to rule other peoples lives, get the ultimate rush by being allowed to legally murder another person. Think about that for a minute. If you feel you are better than other humans, and so you have the RIGHT to tell others how they should live their lives, then wouldn't the ultimate for a control freak like be to be able to decide if someone lives or dies?
It probably makes DAs feel like an Emperor at a gladiator fight, slowly putting his thumb down to end the life of the fallen gladiator as the Amerikan public cheers in the background. Ah, theres no feeling like that, now is there?
Rant Off...
NC Tom -
Absolutely brilliant suggestion about requiring the full text of the Ten Commandments to be posted on death row and on the execution room wall. Seriously. Every time some idiot or law and order demagogue stands up in Congress or in a state legislature extolling the virtues of capital punishment, somebody should introduce a resolution requiring there be an exception to separation of church and state that would mandate "Thou Shall Not Kill" to be posted where the bodies are going to hit the floor.
Now let's have our floor debate and put it up for a public vote.....
Bill from Saginaw
On the other hand, I can think of a few states with demagogues and teeming barbarian masses who would be absolutely thrilled at the idea of inscribing the Ten Commandments on a two-ton block of granite suspended from a heavy-duty hoist, to be dropped from a suitable height directly upon a Death Row inmate enclosed in a leakproof body bag.
I think the courts would be OK with this-- as with "In God We Trust" pointlessly inscribed on US currency, they'll blithely conclude that the Decalogue is actually a form of patriotic speech, not an expression of religion.
Cruel and unusual? Not if they sedate the prisoner; nowadays, they can put you out like a light. It's a win-win outcome!
"Vengance is mine saith the lord"
I am not a devil dodger but does this not mean it is the lord god who shall take vengance and not us mere persons? It appears to this uneducated human that the death penalty is for politicians to maintain their voter base and power.
As a society we decided to set up a Juvenile Court System in recognition that children and minors cannot make =adult= judgments about the consequences of their actions. Court records, in most cases, remain sealed, punishments are chosen with concern and remediation in mind, etc. and so on.
FURTHER - as a society, we were brought to reflect upon the circumstance where severe intellectual deficit plays a part in crimes for which the convicted is subject to the Death Penalty. Obviously, executing severely retarded people SENDS NO MESSAGE to other severely retarded people: Don't DO that or this is what will happen to you. Consequently, the function of deterrence is mooted. Severe intellectual deficit is exculpatory for being given the Death Penalty.
So, the next matter was how to identify the cohort of persons to whom clemency can or may be expressed. Voila, the legal system sat at attention while Psychologists showed them one AND ONLY ONE GRAPHIC - to whit the BELL CURVE. It looks like a bell, with some vertical lines. A line dead center indicates the defined =average IQ= of 100. There is some reference to Standard Deviations which are either above or below the mean. If the judges count three lines or SD to the left, there is the NUMBER 70, above which individuals are defined as having borderline low intelligence and below which individuals are defined as mentally retarded.
Cool. The judges have now seen enough and learned all they need to know about intelligence from Psychologists - to whom they hold out a deterring and gagging hand. The judges have made their judgment and now want to remove their imperial robes and go home.
THE PART OF THE LECTURE THE JUDGES MISSED
"Judge, how would you like to take a test on Tuesday, get a score, then take the same test on Friday and get a DIFFERENT SCORE? Which score is correct?"
A psychometric characteristic of all tests is RELIABILITY. This is evaluated by 1) test-retest as above, 2) alternate forms with minor word or number changes, 3) split-half in which a long test is divided and the scores compared with each other. This research produces a metric called Coefficient of of RELIABILITY. It varies from zero to 1.0.
A test score is an estimate of a person’s “true” test performance. Using a reliability coefficient and the test’s standard deviation, we can calculate this value: SEM = s times the square root of( 1 – r) - where S = the standard deviation for the test and r = the reliability coefficient for the test. Imagine a Wechsler Intelligence test with a split-half reliability coefficient of .96 and a standard deviation of 15.
1-r =.04.
The square root of .04=.2
The product of 15 times .2 = 3.0.
The SEM = 3.
Teresa received a SCORE of 72.
There is a 68% chance that her "true IQ score is between 69 and 75.
There is a 95% chance that her "true IQ score is between 66 and 78.
In the case of Teresa Lewis, the JUDGES JUDGED her to be executable. IMO, the work covenant between Law and Psychology is pissed upon.
ANNOUNCEMENT - the post of Chief Judge is vacant, and the post will be awarded to the person with the highest measured intelligence. Judge Thomas scores 129 while Judge Kagan scores 127. There is a MEANINGFUL TWO POINT SPREAD and Judge Kagan has no right whatsoever to whine that there is a standard error of measurement of 3 points. Boo hoo.
The reference to Teresa Lewis as having an IQ in the borderline low intelligence range is not exculpatory of either her execution nor the "washing of hands" by most members of the US Supreme Court. So help me God.
In my career I wrote over 2,000 Psychological Reports that included assessment of an individual's intelligence.
Do you honestly think judge would understand what you described above?
The members the bourgeois that enters the legal profession (among others - like politics and to some extent, big business), does so becasue they are mentally deficient in mathematics, statistics probability, and often, logic. Otherwise, they would be in a technical or scientific livlihood.
The judge's ears closed up like spincters as soon as he started hearing such stuff in testimony.
Certainly if there is impaired intelligence additional testing should be done that looks at functional ability, adaptive behavior, etc. I read Lewis's history and it is pretty disfunctional, marriage at 16 with two children before she was twenty. What she did while her husband and stepson lay dieing is what made her case exceptional. It doesn't get more grusome or devoid of compassion, we will never know the extent of this tragedy but possibly her children will get the help they are going to need.
clearbluesky
Marrying at 16 plus two kids yada yada - you've described one of my first cousins. She managed a high school diploma, went on to become a licensed Paralegal, and today has 30 years experience, with praise from every employer. Do we attribute the difference between her and Teresa to intelligence or character? Intelligence, obviously. WRT character, that has been addressed by her fellow prison inmates and the prison chaplain. My cousin's behavior has been an occasional source of gossip in Travis City. So what?
The US Constitution makes no mention of what we are expected to do while spouses and stepchildren are dying, whose death we have caused. We have no national standard of politically incorrect and inappropriate behavior, the failure of which to maintain across minutes compels the rest of us to feel justified in their murder.
The reference to this behavior comes from the Prosecutor - a person who visited the crime scene and left with PTSD - CONSEQUENTLY using every ugly and repulsive descriptive term he could think of for Teresa Lewis.
Interviewer: What do you think of the accused's left elbow?
Prosecutor: Its a hideous evil elbow attached to the most disgusting person who ever lived.
Interviewer: And how about her right earlobe?
Prosecutor: Revolting. Makes me want to vomit. It should be excised and deep fried.
The help that Teresa's children are going to need will not be food, shelter, and clothing. It will be to deal with a society that murdered their mother =on fucking caprice and prejudice= rather than let her remain alive in prison. I am reminded of the 1953 execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for spying - whose sons Robert and Michael were my age - I saw them on television, looking stunned.
I agree with you on some points but there are rules about mitigation, if you watch someone dying and don't call for help that is reprehensible, if you pick thier pocket and divide up thier possessions well that may not be a rule but how would you interpret it? Even the most competent person would not have a defense for such behavior. I think Lewis was abandoned on a lot of levels as one of her children was involved in the crime. What is to be learned from this is in that domain. As I said it is a human tragedy.
You shoot yourself in the foot. The rule about mitigation is =We don't execute people with profound intellectual deficit= whether they fail to make a telephone call in some situation, or wear white after Labor Day.
I regard it a human tragedy that Teresa's children will have to share this planet with you.
Teresa did not have a profound intellectual deficit, that would be an IQ level of 35. I have trained people at the profound and severe level to address daily living needs, someone with a profound level of disability has a difficult time feeding themselves. I am not justifying an execution based on intellectual functioning, I am suggesting that intervention was possible long before this happened and that bleeding hearts like yourself fail to see beyond your own bias. There is also a dignity of risk, that is about equality of experience even if it turns out badly. Additionally, a social maturity scale of adaptive and maladaptive behavior would be used because just using cognitive ability is not enough. And one final point, her children one of whom is in prison for this crime and another didn't get a blip on the radar here and that is what needs to be addressed.
How many tests of intelligence tests have you administered as a licensed psychologist? You have utter gall to tell me that profound intellectual deficit is an IQ level of 35. Horseshit. That is less than half of one percent of the human population.
The American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association settled upon three standard deviations (can you compute one?) below the mean at which intelligence level is exculpatory from the DEATH PENALTY. No other tests or measures of functioning were included. Live with it.
I'm not letting you run away from the point of your initial post, i.e. that behavior YOU found revolting made you abandon any hesitation about taking the life of Teresa Lewis. If you do not think that life in prison was sufficient punishment for Teresa, go look in a mirror and see what a vicarious murderer looks like.
Now she is dead. Nothing else needs to be addressed here, because it would be a red herring. The pea is under THAT shell, from which you are trying to palm the pea. Good try.
Ok, for the last time. What I said was this that during the commission of the crime which is not disputed that Theresa had an opportunity to change the outcome of at least one person that was dying or use mitigation for lifesaving. She didn't do that and that is most likely why she recieved the death sentence. Because she didn't do the actual crime but could have made an attempt to change the outcome. I didn't say that was right or wrong because I don't have to, but someone did. You brought up the issue of intelligence and cognitive ability as to plausablitiy. It is my opinion that Theresa's actions were beyond my scope of understanding because I worked with developmentally delayed individuals institutionalized as a 15 year project to de-institutionalize people that included the groups I mentioned. Some of my experience included Stanford University and University of California at San Francisco as diagnostic institutions. An Intelligence Quotient score is not a reliable diagnostic indicator for certain groups of people, there are better tests. I also served on human rights committees that explored at lot of issues however most of them did not include criminal behavior or murder. What I see here is there is not enough information, However she children have endured the same or similar conditions and that would be my priority. How I feel about this execution or the death penalty in general is my business, if you are a psychologist you should not be making such gross assumptions. I don't praticularly care for this issue and I regret becoming involved in this discussion.
A pernicious, shameful dynamic of having a death penalty within any state's criminal justice system is how the threat of capital punishment magnifies the potential corruption of the customary plea bargaining/sentence bargaining process.
The "two young accomplices" of this mentally challenged woman pled guilty and got sentenced to life, rather than death. They were the guys who actually killed two innocent people in cold blood, presumably for a share of the victims' life insurance proceeds. Teresa Lewis killed nobody. She was nonetheless denominated the "mastermind" of the plot by the government prosecutors, a mastermind with an IQ of 71.
All three conspirators pled guilty. Two successfully avoided the death penalty by pointing the finger towards the third, who then pays the ultimate price. That was the deal. The bargain was kept.
Perhaps the blame shifting testimony of the killers was truthful, perhaps it was shaded, perhaps it was self-serving outright perjury. Now, it no longer matters of course. The deal is finally done.
The Draconian sentencing structure of the American criminal justice system makes plea bargaining and sentence bargaining virtually inevitable (often, leniency being extended in exchange for testimony to help convict others). The temptation to shave months, years, or decades off of a massive looming prison sentence by cooperating with authorities - and just telling an itty bitty lie, or two, or three - is corrupting influence enough. Stirring the threat of a death penalty into the mix creates a qualitatively different disincentive for ferreting out the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about genuinely awful crimes. Capital punishment eventually distorts the fundamental moral equation beneath plea/sentence bargaining beyond all recognition.
The good people of the commonwealth of Virginia rightfully should feel uneasy about the deal struck in their name, and carried out to its conclusion, in Teresa Lewis's case. The very fallible, mortal human beings who run their criminal justice system in good faith day-by-day should no longer be granted the powers of life and death - the power to play God - on a case-by-case, crime-by-crime basis.
This deal stinks to high heaven. But it is the law of the land. Virginia, and the nation, share equal blame in my view, so long as the death penalty remains a permissible "option on the table" for law-and-order officials to brandish about, to use, and inevitably to unjustly misuse.
As Justin Ravitz, a wise old judge of the Detroit Recorders' felony court once quipped, "The criminal justice system is America's only smoothly running railroad."
RIP, Teresa. You done wrong, but you didn't deserve this.
Spread the blame and share the shame. And there's a lot to be ashamed about here.
Bill from Saginaw
Early this morning James (Jim) Rocap had to step up to a microphone and speak for Teresa Lewis, having attended her execution last night. Though grieving terribly he held himself together to say what she wanted, and say what he wanted. The film clip is on CNN.
Jim Rocap is a partner in a Washington DC firm called Steptoe & Johnson. They've handled this a long time pro bono, for which we all ought to be grateful. His personal page is:
http://www.steptoe.com/professionals-365.html and mail jrocap@steptoe.com
Trylon
I've voted twice against propositions in our fine state to implement the death penalty. I wonder when we face the third, fourth, fifth. I wonder when it finally passes. It's like entropy.
Justice Scalia once admitted that he had no doubt that we've executed innocent people in the US, yet he still supports the death penalty, even though his Catholic Church is opposed to it.
And how many so-called "pro-life" people do you know who oppose the death penalty? They never seem opposed to killing innocent civilians in unjust wars, either, or to the death penalty that is imposed on Americans who can't afford access to health care.
This says a lot about the American fascist state! Talk about legal homicide! It is okay for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Obama and all the rest of their murdering, accomplices to murder thousands of innocents around the world, in the name of their masters security, even innocent Americans, like the ones that just got killed by Drones in Pakistan, or the several thousand that were murdered by the inside job of 911, but one dysfunctional lady is executed while these evil, people that are evil but intelligent and a thousand times or more.... GUILTY!GUILTY! GUILTY! of torture and war crimes go scott free AND THEY HAVE EVEN ADMITTED THEIR GUILT! To quote Madelaine Albright when asked about the killing of thousands of innocent men, women and children in Iraq " it was worth it ". Or on another occasion she replied " IF WE HAVE TO USE FORCE IT IS BECAUSE WE ARE THE INDISPENSABLE NATION. WE STAND TALL ". One has to wonder what it will take to incarcerate these people and put them behind bars where they belong! We will never get out country back until the guilty are brought to justice.
Paul Revere, thanks for finally bring light to this gross miscarriage of justice.
There are obviously two seperate legal systems in this country...one for the haves and then another for we the people.
While I had always believed that a death sentence was supposed to be based on a person's future threat to society, this case proves that quite to the contrary, the death penalty is nothing more than venegence.
Who presents more of a threat to society (or for that matter, humanity in general?)This 41 year old grandmother whose mental capacity is highly in question, or persons such as George W. Bu$h, who lied to start two wars which have thus far killed over five thousand Americans' children and millions of Iraqi and Afgan civilians, just so he could be a "war time president" and steal resources belonging to other sovergn nations.
We give the grandmother death and her accomplises life without parole, yet the perpetrators of our illegal wars get a lifetime salary, a personal security force for life, health insurance, and a multi-million dollar house in an exclusive suburb of Dallass. Of course murder isn't the only charge worth noting. There is torture, kidnapping, illegal wiretapping, the list goes on and on.
So, we now have one dead grandmother with an IQ of 70, yet we still have the same folks who lied us into two wars, killed thousands of your children, killed millions of others children and loved ones, and they are living quite well, thank you. Now don't you feel so much better knowing that justice has been served.
Aussidawq, well said. " Now don't you feel so much better knowing that justice was served ". Like I have said before: how in the hell can you expect to get justice when you are tried by the unjust?
This country appears to be shockingly DEAD. Who executed it???
Another stain on this nation's soul. Excellent posts on this article, so I'll only say this: aside from her IQ of 70, Lewis had two other compelling mitigating factors that cried out for clemency: (1) the disproportionality of the punishment, given the fact that the triggermen got life and (2) the fact that she pled guilty and thereby admitted her crime. That too should have counted for something. But with McDonnell as governor, I never had a doubt what the result would be. I had hoped, however, that the courts would intervene to spare her life based on disproportionality, but inexplicably, they did not.
I also just want to say how disgusted I get when I read the inevitable press reports about the condemned's last meal - of fried chicken, steak, twinkies, whatever. Even Agence France Presse engages in this despicable tradition! When are we going to drop this macabre fascination with what these poor souls chose to eat before they died?
Occasionally it's pertinent.
You may recall that presidential candidate Governor Bill Clinton infamously refused to issue an order of executive clemency to halt the execution of convicted murderer Rickey Ray Rector.
Rector was severely mentally impaired due to a botched suicide attempt during his arrest; he shot himself in the head, but succeeded only in blowing out a prefrontal lobe.
Moreover, Clinton interrupted campaigning in New Hampshire to fly home to preside over the execution. Neither law nor custom required the governor to personally preside over the execution, but for a "pragmatic" politician it was a heaven-sent opportunity to swing his throbbing Law and Order Boner like a champeen drum major. A determined candidate never disdains an occasion to pander to the most reactionary and ethically challenged elements of his constituency.
Rector requested pecan pie for his last dessert-- not counting his ultimate unjust desert. But during the meal, he moved the slice of pie to the window sill of his holding cell. When asked why he was not eating his pie, Rector explained that he was "saving it" for "after the execution."
You could look it up.
Nice people doing nice things.
Hmm. I hadn't heard that story. Did that reflect Ricky's brain damage -- not understanding what was about to happen to him? If so, that says it all. Here's another one: just before the State of Florida executed Bernard ("Bo") Bolender, his guards commented on what a nice guy Bo was and mentioned that he ordered himself a very nice meal and then told the guards he wanted them to have it.
One of the most Kafkaesque aspects of Florida executions is the fabulous spread of food they put out for those witnessing the executions. (At least that's how it used to be.) The whole spectacle of executions is surreal, just like in the CNN video referenced above by Trylon, where a reporter from the local TV station speaks calmly about a guard tapping Ms. Lewis' shoulders to try to "calm her." It's just crazy. Completely crazy.
The country which causes so much death and destruction around the world has little hesitation in killing its own citizens. Why is there such a high murder rate in the US if there is the deterrence of capital punishment?
I am bothered not with this article's ultimate premise, but how they are finagling extra pity from reality of facts by stressing she's a "grandmother"!
First of all, she's 41. I'm 53. If I were a grandfather at 41, what would that say? If I fathered a child at 20, the child would be 20 when I was 40. If the next year, at age 21, the child made me a grandfather, I would be 41.
The point is that her status as a "grandmother" is irrelevant. All that proves is that she was a mother at a young age.
On the whole, I am ambivalent about the death penalty, and here's why:
- I know that I would be incapable of making such a decision on a jury.
- I also know that if I had a child, and if my child were molested, raped, murdered, I would feel very differently about that person getting the death penalty. But I don't have a child, so that's a relatively moot point, for me personally. Yet, it begs the question....
How would YOU feel if the person whom they raped, and/or tortured, and/or murdered, was YOUR spouse/parent/child, etc.?
Just a thought, that's all.
I've skimmed just about every comment in this section and been impressed with just about every one.
To the reason you give that you say creates your ambivalence, I suggest this:
If you (or some people with greater proclivities in their desires for vengeance when wronged) had a teenage child who was spat on, I expect there would be a dramatic divergence between the penalty the law would impose on the offender and that far greater penalty for which you might have hoped.
The entire point of the state determining guilt and punishment is to balance the competing considerations more rationally and fairly and to enable meaningful rehabilitation and reintegration to take place. A civilised state is a society after all which in some way humbly reflects that in many cases it might have neglected or failed to tend for the accused to allow the accused to develop such wrongful thinking and tendencies in the first place. I enjoyed elements of the movie "Trading Places", for example, which explored this theme.
It is an unrepairable tragedy for a spouse/parent/child of a murder victim. Life imprisonment is what we have to address the wrong. Mind you, a jury might have sympathy for a family member who unlawfully exacts the punishment of lex talionis themselves, but it is abhorrent for the State to do so. In neither case will it honour or bring back the original deceased. Meanwhile, where capital punishment is practiced, another family (if the convict had a family) is caused by the state to suffer profound grief through no fault of their own.
Otherwise, everything else seems to have been said.
Well said.
I agree that the grandmother argument is irrelevant. The mental limitation argument is more relevant. But neither is necessary. Cold blooded execution at the hands of a state machinery dehumanizes all of us. We should not do it.
If a person harmed my child I would probably very much want to kill him. However, this should not be a place where individual passions and prejudices rule. There are too many cases in which the wrong person is identified as the culprit and wrongly punished. Sometimes it is an honest mistake and sometimes not. Thus we need methods to check our assumptions and allow for a defense.
I would be satisfied to see a fair trial and then let him rot in an unprivatized prison for the rest of his life. I would like Cheney to be his roommate, as Cheney's organizational activities caused thousands of deaths, whereas this woman caused only two.
Joe
Why on god's green earth did this get flagged?
I'd give my opinion about the flagger, but would be banned for using language that I last heard on a parade ground.
"Why on god's green earth did this get flagged?"
___________________________
Sheer spite or stupidity, or something in between.
I'm not really a fan of the flagging feature, but one mustn't say too much about the comments setup here.
In any case, it's been increasingly abused over the course of recent months. Perhaps it's a form of "comments rage", in which an offended visitor becomes so incensed that they just floor the flagging button to run their target right off the road. Pathetic.
[How would YOU feel if the person whom they raped, and/or tortured, and/or murdered, was YOUR spouse/parent/child, etc.?]
That is a question I can answer, because I asked the rellies about it. Neither myself nor my parents would like it at all if someone were executed should they be convicted of murdering any of us.
I'll echo an above comment, once they're dead, that's it. Punishment over. I am NOT in favour of giving a murderer a 'get out of jail free' card by executing him/her. I am appalled by the notion that the state claims the right of executing someone who can be proven to have committed any crime beyond 'reasonable doubt'.
Reasonable doubt, that's a strange phrase isn't it? What is reasonable to me isn't going to be reasonable to someone else, yet how many of those who serve on juries figure that the accused was arrested by the cops; therefore he/she must have done something wrong. Why else would they have been arrested?
No, a death penalty is not something I can tolerate if that penalty includes an execution. I would be in favour of a DP that meant that the condemned would be locked up until he/she died, then is buried behind the prison walls. Buried not with a name, but their prisoner's number. That is the true fear of every convict, that they'll die in jail; forgotten by the rest of us.
That is what a murderer deserves. To be forgotten.
This terrifies me. I have a daughter with learning disabilities and an IQ in the low 80's. She can be talked into doing ANYTHING. There's no way this woman was the mastermind. The horror of this execution has nothing to do with her being a woman or a grandmother. It has to do with her mental limitations.
There appears to be some backlash due to this execution:
Hospira is the company which manufactures sodium thiopental, an important anasthetic used for surgery. States also use it to kill people by lethal injection. The company released a statement today calling on states to stop using their product for that purpose:
"Hospira provides these products because they improve or save lives and markets them solely for use as indicated on the product labeling. As such, we do not support the use of any of our products in capital-punishment procedures."
http://blog.amnestyusa.org/deathpenalty/drug-company-stop-using-our-product-for-executions
"What kind of people are we to execute someone like her?"
Don't get me wrong, I don't agree with the death penalty but she was in no way shape or form innocent. She isn't a fucking grandmother either, She killed that chance off.
Jesus W. Shithead, A Governor
Jesus W. Shithead, A War Preznit.
Jesus W. Shithead: 152 executions.
Jesus W. Shithead, A CHRISTIAN.
Jesus W. Shithead, A born-again, dry-drunk, man-child CHRISTIAN.
Ah yes, it's morning in Amerika. Don't you just love the smell of death?
The higher up you stand in the hierarchy of this society, the more people you may kill without any consequence at all (Bush, Cheney, Obama), whereas the lower your station is in this order, the more likely you will be executed if you are so much as merely suspected of having killed anyone.
I am seeing lots of compassion for the killer and little for the victim.It's too late for them I guess.
The killer wasn't the one who was executed. The killer got life without parole, and you'd have known that if you had read the bloody article.
You'd also have noticed that none of us argued that the lady should have gone free. That is, had you been able to understand what it was that we had said.