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Death penalty too much power for government .

DefenderDefender Member Posts: 1,772 ✭✭✭✭✭
When I was a young policeman in Chicago, the Cook County jail guards went on strike. The jail was staffed with guard supervisors and Chicago cops. This lasted a couple of months. I was assigned to this duty and hated it with a passion.

They executed many prisoners in the jail during the 1930 through the 1960s. Chicago's condemned inmates were never sent to prison in those days. The jail had it's own busy electric chair. That chair stayed in the jail until the mid 1970s and it was removed and sent to the old prison in Joliet. I guess it never hurts to have a spare electric chair around a prison. Before the 1930s, hanging was Chicago's method of retribution for capitol crimes.

The Fuhrman vs. Georgia capital punishment moratorium was not quite a decade old yet. To me, at 23 years of age, that decade was a lifetime. I had heard some of the names of people they fried but that was about all. I could remember those celebrated cases in California of Carol Chessman and Barbara Graham that were resolved in the gas chamber of San Quentin. Chessman never killed anyone. Chessman was executed for rapes of women he stopped on highways with a red flashing police light. He went to his death maintaining his innocence.

While assigned to that dreaded jail duty I met an old Black jail Chaplin who walked scores of men on their last walk. They were short walks since the Jail's four-cell Death Row was less than 20 feet away from the chair and witness viewing area. The spectators were not separated from the condemned by glass or anything. They could hear the man's words, * sounds and the buzzing of the electricity along with the humming of the big generators. They could also smell the condemned's flesh burning.

The old reverend gave me all the gory details of his taking these souls to their last journey. I found his stories to be fascinating and beyond macabre. He also made it clear to me that not all of these men found or wanted forgiveness suggesting that a small percentage went straight to Hell.

I went into that execution chamber and tried to sit in the chair. I could not let my butt do more than barley touch the seat and I had enough of the experience and was back standing.

I few years later the bloodbath was on again with the firing squad execution of Gary Gilmore in Utah. I remember Chicago cops wearing t-shirts under their uniforms that were printed with Gilmore's last words, "Let's do it." Capitol punishment came back with a bang everywhere except the Cook County Jail where executions were no longer carried out.

Cops particularly were fond of the death penalty. I somehow thought killing these killers was both beneficial and necessary back then. I never thought for even a second that we'd ever kill an innocent man. That was only fodder for TV scriptwriters, as in the story of The Fugitive, Dr. Richard Kimball.

Years later DNA became an investigative tool that gained wide acceptance as an infallible way to establish the guilt or innocence of the accused. A funny thing happened along the way. The clear-ups of murders everywhere went from the high 80s percentile to nearly half that. Instead of implicating more of the guilty, the opposite was happening. We were letting people we had already arrested go after being cleared by DNA evidence.

The inescapable conclusion to all this was that we killed a Hell of a lot of innocent people along the way. Then you begin to wonder about the other convictions where DNA was never involved. I also wonder what DNA could have done for Carol Chessman the rapist executed so long ago. This is the part where I jumped off the train to death Row just like Richard Kimball. I no longer wanted this part of crime and punishment.

Defender
Private investigator licensed in AZ & CA that specializes in self defense cases.

Comments

  • HighballHighball Member Posts: 15,755
    edited November -1
    Valid points.

    Whats learned from the mess made of the justice system should be an intense spotlight put on prosecutors and judges..they should be held accountible for concealing evidence and railroading innocent people to jail...

    Executing the vicious trash that prey on decent people is a duty of mankind...and getting the GUILTY party is supposed to be job one.

    Too bad that is of small concern in this society.
  • amsptcdsamsptcds Member Posts: 679
    edited November -1
    One of the major discussions in the philosophy of law, not to be confused with the application of the law, centers on the key issue of innocent persons being executed.

    At some levels there are actually ideas that the probable 1 to 3% who are innocent are an acceptable statistic if capital punishment were truly a deterrent. I am not saying that this is what I think, just relaying what I have discovered about it.

    I lived in LaPorte IN when I was really young. Michigan city had a prison and a chair. I remember that my grandmother kept me up really late one night so that we could wait for the lights to dim however many miles away we were. She simply told me that this is what happens to bad boys and told me why the lights dimmed.

    Then she told me some story that I can't hardly remember about some local guy that wa doing something that I can't remember. Anyway grandma shot him with a shot gun and was responsible for his capture. I think that's who got fried that night.

    I am not against capital punishment in a world that can give us DNA Proof beyond a doubt. But even that has its problems. But I do think that in those cases, death time ought to be 2 weeks.
    I DO realize that someone could tamper with the DNA test and that in reality the results only give a probablility NOT a certainty no matter what the liars like to say about it.

    Here in California, I stayed up to see if they killed Williams, I'm glad he's gone and it was way past due. I am not up for housing those monkeys and death is too good for the likes of him.
    But he won't be raping any skinny guys or calling his gang to threaten people any more.

    I know that I sound a little harsh about this, but I figure that the only good enemy is a dead one, and this guy was a societal enemy. If those Books did so much good then his death will have been even better as it will show those kids with out a doubt, that if you do the crime you WILL be punished. That's a good message I think.

    The duty to preserve one's self ought never be denied.


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  • gunphreakgunphreak Member Posts: 1,791 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    Capital punishment, when done properly, may not be the best deterrent to violent crime... but it does a wonderful job of making bad people dead.

    That said, if it should come to the attention of the people that a judge or prosecutor withheld evidence and put an innocent man to death, they too should die for bearing false witness against an innocent.... no appeals.

    Death to Tyrants!!!
    Lev 26:14-39

    Those who would offer any interpretation that would relegate Amendment II to "relic" status of a bygone era are blatantly stating that the remainder of the Bill of Rights isn't worth a damn, either.

    Luke 22:36.

    "Mirror Mirror on the wall. Who's the ugliest one of all?"

    -Janet Reno, the Butcher of Waco.
  • WoundedWolfWoundedWolf Member Posts: 1,658 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    quote:Capital punishment, when done properly, may not be the best deterrent to violent crime... but it does a wonderful job of making bad people dead.

    A simple yet profound statement, gunphreak. I think it all comes down to what you believe is the purpose of our penal system. Is it punishment, deterent, or rehabilitation?

    I think punishment is the only certainty we can count on. Granted, there are the few who are falsely punished, but there is always going to be that percentage, we can only hope that we make it as small as possible. The only other way is to throw the whole system out altogether, which I don't think would be pretty.

    As for Tookie, he no doubt was a bad bad man. Even if he did not commit these murders, isn't there a likelihood that this condemned man commited other heinous crimes? Now Scott Peterson is another case. No previous criminal record and he gets the death penalty. If he really didn't kill his wife and unborn child then God help us all. Yet I'm sure he was heading straight to hell for the lifestyle he was living. Do we judge those here on Earth, hoping we are condemning only those already damned, or do we damn ourselves in the process? I like to think that we are making the world a better place, even if we make a few mistakes along the way. Of course we all hope we are not one of those mistakes.

    -Wolf

    wwsm.GIF
    MOLON LABE




    The Second Amendment begins when the First Amendment ends.
  • gunphreakgunphreak Member Posts: 1,791 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    I perceive the penal system as punishment. Why? Because I know deterrence is our job. Give the bad guys something to think about, and that is half the battle.

    I do not believe in rehabilitation for heinous criminals... only punishment. Any crime commited against someone other than "The State" must be punished.

    Death to Tyrants!!!
    Lev 26:14-39

    Those who would offer any interpretation that would relegate Amendment II to "relic" status of a bygone era are blatantly stating that the remainder of the Bill of Rights isn't worth a damn, either.

    Luke 22:36.

    "Mirror Mirror on the wall. Who's the ugliest one of all?"

    -Janet Reno, the Butcher of Waco.
  • KYfatboyKYfatboy Member Posts: 859 ✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    The problem with the penal system, is it's to easy. I can't tell you how many cons have told me "d8mn cap, I didn't have it this good on the street." It really is A case of state paid for satillite TV, nice climate controled living conditions, nice libriaries, good gym, good health play(in the last year before I left the DOC to pursre the private sector, the rules where changed to any inmate who is not on indigent status must pay A 2 dollar copay for A doctors visit, but this does not apply to medicine, or emergency's) the canteen, which con's call the store, where they can but, hot dogs, cans of soup, coolers, bread, peanut butter, milk, Ice cream, lunch meat, tobacco, you name it. There are ice machines in the living units, we feed them, clothe them, tell them it's not their fault, you name it. Three hots, and A cot, with A punk in every bunk. Of course there is the part about being in closed company with some very dangerous, and sexually aggressive individuals, but if your either open ended, or minded enough, or tough enough, that ain't no big thing. It really ain't that much punishment. I thought I was going to get in all kinds of trouble once when I was out side of the living unit once walking on the flowers in the inmate flower garden, one of the inmates ratted me out to the unit adminstrater, who informed me he was telling my evaluateing LT. When LT fryberger called me he said next time call him before I do something like that, he would like to come, and help.[:D] Speaking of flower gardens in prison, this was A big hush hush. I no longer work their so screw em. Some how an inmate got A hold of A seed for the poppy plant, and convinced the unit adminstrator it was A pretty flower, could he plant it. Next thing you know, we had enough opium growing in the inmate flower gardens to keep louisville high for A few years. This is punishment in prison.

    www.templeofthesith.com Dark lord of the sith.
  • gunphreakgunphreak Member Posts: 1,791 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    That's why I strictly oppose rehabilitation on any level of the penal system.

    Death to Tyrants!!!
    Lev 26:14-39

    Those who would offer any interpretation that would relegate Amendment II to "relic" status of a bygone era are blatantly stating that the remainder of the Bill of Rights isn't worth a damn, either.

    Luke 22:36.

    "Mirror Mirror on the wall. Who's the ugliest one of all?"

    -Janet Reno, the Butcher of Waco.
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